Revelation
by Amicitia Revenant
Summary: Raphael gets attacked in an alley. A mysterious presence saves his life... and then keeps showing up around the lair. Who *is* that guy?
1. Prologue

It was supposed to be an easy mission. Walk a few blocks, pick up some dinner, and go home. No fighting.

No problem.

He had just scoped out the sidewalk, and was about to exit the alley behind the pizza place when the Foot ninja came out of nowhere. It took him half a second too long to draw his sai from underneath the bulky sweatshirt, and then he was on the ground and their swords were everywhere.

Just as instantly, they were gone.

Blood was sticky on his face, but he forced his eyes open. There was still one human in the alley with him. Or, at least, he was _like_ a human. He was like a human in the same way that a Renaissance statue was like an injection-molded action figure.

It creeped him out, and it unsettled him that the Foot ninja had run away from this ur-human. The guy didn't look like much of a challenge even for a complete novice in the arts of ninjutsu. He wasn't even armed, unless you counted the strangely old-fashioned fishing pole he was carrying. He wasn't carrying it like a weapon.

He tried to form words, demand answers. "Wha...?"

The person knelt beside him, laying down his fishing pole. "You are very injured." He reached for the shredded clothing.

"Don't -"

"You are safe." The person touched him, gently. "Help is coming."

"No ambulance," he forced out, even though the blood was filling his mouth, trying to gag him. "No doctors."

"No," he said.

"Who -" He coughed violently, turned his head, and spat on the dirty pavement. "Who are you?"

"I am the angel."

"Hell no," he said, but the pain was intense. He closed his eyes.

"You are very injured," the person said again.

He was bleeding everywhere and it was getting hard to breathe. "'m leaving here alive," he whispered.

"Yes. Help is coming."

He opened his eyes again, looked at the young man. Glow from the streetlamp was falling around him like wings. "Who _are_ you?"

"I am the angel, Raphael."

"Raphael!"

"Raphael!"

His brothers were coming.

He was going to be okay.


	2. Chapter 1

Raphael was pretty sure he was awake again, but the world still wasn't making any sense. Everything was blurry, and sound was muted, as though he had a film of dirty water over his eyes, and bubbles trapped in his ears. He was having trouble locating his own body.

There was a figure standing near him, outlined in light.

"Who are you?" he rasped. His throat felt lumpy, abused. Someone was talking but he couldn't understand their words.

The world drifted away.

* * *

There were shapes now, and sharp little noises, and still the bright figure.

"I'm going home," he said, because it seemed to make sense.

Someone was leaning over him. "You are home, Raph. You're safe." A familiar face, overlaid with concern. "Do you know who I am?"

He blinked hard. "Donnie," he said, with a great effort, and deflated into himself.

"You were awake earlier," Don said. "Do you remember?"

His eyes roamed around. Books. Bottles. Bed. "Don't know."

"Do you remember being attacked?"

He found his eyes resting heavily on nothing, made them move again. Brother. Blink.

"Raph? Do you -"

Blackness.

* * *

And back.

"Hi Donnie," he said.

"Hi Raph." Donatello was sitting on a stool, waiting for him. "You look better."

"Better than what?"

"Do you remember earlier?"

He thought, lost track of time, focused again. "Sort of."

"Stay with me, Raph. Do you remember who attacked you?"

Instantly: "Foot."

"How many?"

"Ten. Twenty. Don't know."

"Okay. It doesn't matter. You can sleep again."

"No." He tried to find his hands, couldn't, forgot about them again. "Tell me what happened."

"Well, there's... " Don trailed off, moving his lips silently. "There's two pieces of good news and four pieces of bad news."

"Bad news in the middle."

Don shifted in his seat. "The first good news is that whoever attacked you was enthusiastic but incompetent. They didn't manage to hit a single vital point."

"So I'm not dead."

"Exactly. The first _bad_ news is that you had a lot of fluid in your lungs, and if it doesn't clear soon you're looking at another round with pneumonia."

He grimaced.

"Yeah, you didn't like it much two years ago, and you probably won't like it any better now." He paused, briefly. "The second bad news is that someone made a spirited attempt to cut off your foot. They didn't get through, but the ligaments are a mess. You won't be running again for a long time. I'm sorry, Raph."

"Not your fault."

Don was silent for a moment. Then he said, "The third bad news is that you'll have a long list of new scars waiting to make your acquaintance, and the fourth bad news is that your clothes are ruined. The _good_ news is that we found you right away."

He rested, feeling the sheets around him. Something crept through the margins of his mind. Someone...

Don was still there.

"What about the other guy?"

"What other guy?"

His mind wandered, rallied, returned. "The guy with the fishing pole."

"I didn't see anyone like that, Raph. What did he do?"

He looked back across the sleeping and waking times. "Talked to me. Said... he said..." He wrestled with the image, tried to hold onto it with numb fingers. "Don't know."

"It's okay, Raph. We can talk about it later. You should rest now."

"Stay?"

"I won't leave you."

He meant to say more words, but he was asleep.

* * *

Donatello had lied to him.

"You're Leo," he said, accusingly.

"Yes. That's right, Raph."

"Don't patronize me."

"Sorry." Leo stood up, came closer, reached out, changed his mind. He crossed his arms - a nervous habit he manifested when he didn't know what to do with himself. "Don said you were pretty out of it earlier."

"Yeah, I know." His arms seemed to be working better now. He asked one hand to rub his head and it did, though he paid for the service with a number of sharp and discrete pains. He noticed that his wrist and elbow were bare, though parts of his arm were wrapped in bandages; his mask was missing. He put the thought aside. "Where is he?"

Leonardo tilted his head, and Raphael easily tracked the implied angle with his eyes. Don, or at least a Don-shaped lump, was buried in a nest of blankets under the desk. "He wouldn't leave," Leonardo said, and Raphael wondered in what sense he meant it.

He thought about sitting up but it didn't seem worthwhile. "Mikey?" he asked instead. "Splinter?"

"Master Splinter is guarding the lair, and Mike is..." Leo turned his head and looked out the door of the infirmary. "Being Mike."

"In what way?"

"In the way that..." Leo retreated to the stool, perched on the barest edge of it. "He was first to find you, and," he fidgeted uncomfortably, "and he thought you were dead."

He scoffed. "Not nearly."

"Yes nearly! That was two days ago, Raph!"

"No way!" He had an almost infallible sense of time, and his brothers knew it. "An hour!"

"No."

He lay there, dumbfounded. He may not have been the smartest of the brothers, but there were certain things in his head that just _worked_, reliably, without effort. He wondered if Donatello had lied to him by omission, leaving out a fifth piece of bad news.

Leo was speaking again. "You didn't wake up at all until this afternoon. When we found you - god, Raph, you looked like you'd been stabbed through a dozen times. I don't know how the hell your shirt had that many holes in it and you were still..." He cut himself off, unable to say more. He sat, looking away, and Raphael lay watching him.

Into the silence came the soft shifting of blankets. "What's going on?" Don mumbled.

Leo bolted from his seat. "I'm going - going to make some food. Are you hungry?" It wasn't clear who he was asking, and anyway he left without waiting for an answer.

"Are you?" Don asked, extricating himself from the makeshift bed.

He shrugged. He didn't know; it didn't matter; the question was only conversational. His arms rubbed against the bed and hurt more. "What gives, Don? Am I dying?"

"You're not dying," Don assured him, calmly bending down to pick up the blankets. He separated them and shook them out. "Would I fall asleep if you were dying?"

If he had nothing else in the world, Raphael had faith in his brothers. "No."

"There you go." He lined up the blankets, corner to corner, and folded them together.

"Then what's with Leo?"

"Once again, distracted by worst-case scenarios."

"And Mike? What's his deal?"

Don finished folding the blankets and dropped them in a neat pile on the desk, giving them a final pat. "Trying to fix everything while completely avoiding the actual problem. He'll come around." He finally turned to face his brother. "Come on. Sit up and let me listen to your lungs before Leo comes back."

He rallied his limbs, ignoring the all-over ache that promised more specific pain later, and thought upward thoughts. Hazily, he remembered what Don had told him earlier. "Which leg did they try to remove?"

"Your right leg."

"Damn. I liked that one."

"Very funny." Don slid his arm around Raphael's shoulders and helped pull him upright, deftly inserting a pillow behind his head as he rested against the wall. His injured leg was making itself obvious, now, diverse unpleasant sensations rushing to converge around his ankle. He distracted himself with watching Don pull open a drawer and take out a stethoscope of questionable provenance.

He cringed as his brother came toward him, shifting his mask and inserting the bulbs into his ears. Don hadn't warmed it, it was going to be cold, but he wasn't going to jump, he wasn't going to -

The metal disk touched the skin under his carapace and he jumped. It didn't help his leg.

"I hate it when you do that," he said.

"I hate it when you come home like this," Don said mildly. "Breathe in."

He breathed in and thought about a reply. When Don "hmm"ed, he said, "I didn't even do it on purpose this time."

"Oh, sometimes you get yourself slashed up _on purpose_? Cough."

He coughed, and found he couldn't stop. After an oxygen-deprived, saliva-flecked minute, Donatello pounded him on the back. "Avoid that," he advised, turning away and putting the hated stethoscope back in the drawer.

"Thanks," Raphael said, once he had air again. He was going to say something else, but he was sidetracked by the sudden appearance of a disembodied arm protruding from the doorway. It was holding a tray of food. "Donnie, you have an arm."

"What? Oh." He crossed the room and took the tray. "Thanks, Mike." The arm vanished at speed. Donatello, unperturbed, returned to his stool and divvied up the food.

"What are you going to do to me now?" Raphael asked, accepting a plate of toast.

"For your lungs?" Donatello gracelessly attacked a sandwich. "Intubate. Clean you out with a garden hose and a shop-vac."

Caught mid-toast, he focused on not choking. "That had better be a joke."

Don shrugged and drank some water.

He swallowed hugely, clearing his mouth. "When you said you wouldn't leave, were you just waiting to torture me?"

"I figured it was a waste of time to be angry at you while you were delirious."

"I want a different doctor."

"I'm sorry, Doctor Nice Don has transferred to another hospital."

Raphael finished his toast and spent a few minutes silently nursing his juice. Then: "Feel better?"

"Yes, thanks." Don rubbed his fingers together to dislodge any remaining crumbs, and set his plate aside. "Still disappointed that Leo got first chance. What did he say to you?"

"Nothing you would have wanted to say first." Something else in his mind: a swirl of misplaced colors. "Meant to ask him - what happened to my gear?"

"It's all in your room." Donatello took the cup and plate Raphael held out to him, piled everything back on the tray. "Nothing was stolen."

"Good." He would have hated to have to go after the Foot naked. He kept the thought to himself.

Don hefted the ugly tray, with its load of mismatched dishes and permanently water-stained glasses. "I'm going to take this to the kitchen. Do you want me to come back and stay with you?"

The pain in his leg had flared up again, with no apparent immediate cause. It didn't incline him to be gracious, to accept sympathy. It made him grouchy. Sarcasm was suddenly, unapologetically, inevitable. "You got someplace else to be?"

Donatello looked at him seriously, over his anger but still not willing to make light of the situation. "No one's been out, Raph. I'll stay if you want. Otherwise I should take a turn at the monitors. Master Splinter has been watching them all day."

With an effort, he shunted aside the ill humors taking over his body, and formulated a civil reply. "I'm fine. Go."

Don shifted the tray in his arms. "Can I bring you anything?"

He thought. "Left a book in my bed..."

"I'll find it."

Don went out. A while later he came back with the book, and Raphael read until he fell asleep.


	3. Chapter 2

In his dream, he had made it to the pizza place. He was hunched inside his sweatshirt, watching the half-dozen or so other patrons eat their greasy food at the cheap Formica tables. His order was taking a while, because he had asked for an extra-extra-extra large. Large enough for a mutant turtle to lie down on. Mikey wanted it, so he could fold himself inside a Mikey calzone.

_I'll sleep in it, and then in the morning it will be breakfast!_ he had said.

The pizza guy was showing him the extra-extra-extra large pizza paddle he'd constructed to handle the order. _I got one of those billboards from Times Square_, he explained. He turned it over. It was a poster for _Phantom of the Opera_. _Oh, pizza's done._ He turned to scoop the pie out of the oven.

He was looking for the extra-extra-extra large box the pizza guy had said he had - _I bought a really big mirror a while ago, I saved the box it came in_ - when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, that the other patrons were all standing up. They were coming towards him, shaking clubs and chains out of their sleeves.

He reached for his sai but all he could find were two loaves of garlic bread. In the giant mirror on the far wall, he saw himself, saw that his clothes had vanished. He turned to the pizza guy to ask for help, but the oversized pizza paddle had morphed into a battle axe, which the pizza guy was swinging at his head...

* * *

He woke in a dim room. He was lying down. Someone was standing near him - a figure of light. They were leaning something tall and thin against the wall.

"You!" He tried to scramble upright but a hot flare of pain sizzled through his arms and they slipped out from under him.

It was the young man from the alley, clothed in whiter-than-white, intent on propping up his fishing pole. He did not acknowledge the outburst.

"How did you get in here?" he demanded. At the same time, he wondered if he was still dreaming.

The man finished arranging the pole, and turned to face the bed. "I am manifest," he said.

"What the hell does that mean?" His eyes darted around the room, coming to rest on the book he'd been reading. It was exactly as he had left it. _Not dreaming._ "Leo!" he shouted. "Master Splinter!"

"Help is not coming," the young man said, without feeling.

"Shows what you know," he hissed, straining to catch the first sounds of his family coming to his side.

"I know you, Raphael."

His attention jumped instantly back to the person in white. "How do you know who I am?" he whispered. "How did you _find_ me?"

The young man was watching him, his face curiously blank. "I remember when you were blind," he said. "I was with you then."

"That's a lie," he bit out, but his visitor's expression didn't change. He searched his own memories. "You're lying," he said again, but without much conviction.

"This is truth," the man said, and he said it with the disinterested blandness that would not sustain a lie.

He realized then that no one was coming.

"What do you want from me?" he asked.

The young man held out a bottle. It was glass, thick-bottomed, corked. "You must drink this."

"No."

"You must drink it," and he found the bottle pressed into his strangely unresisting hand. He jerked, forced control of his arm despite the pain washing up and down his limbs. He stared hard at the bottle, trying to guess what might be in it.

His eyes refocused and he saw that it was empty.

He said as much.

"You must drink it," was the only reply.

"How do I know it isn't poison gas?" he asked.

"I would not betray you," the young man said, with the same unshakable certainty that attached to all his statements.

"You're not human, are you."

"No."

In one motion, he thumbed off the cork and upended the bottle over his open mouth.

His body was filled with a sense of rushing cold. His arm fell limply over the side of the bed. His hand opened, and the little bottle crashed to the floor.

* * *

He woke in a dim room. He was lying down. Someone was standing near him - a figure of darkness. They were leaning something tall and thin against the wall.

He remembered the terrible coldness and, while he didn't feel it now, he was afraid. "What did you do?" he tried to ask. It came out in a gasping voice not like his own.

The figure was already fleeing.

"Hey!" he shouted. It came out as a bark, followed by a string of hacking coughs. He closed his eyes against it, turning his head to the side and feeling sharp drops of something wet flying out of his mouth.

When he opened his eyes again, working to pull air into his flooded lungs, the light was on. Master Splinter had come.

"Did you get him?" The words scraped against his throat. He forced them out anyway.

Master Splinter was watching him, but Raphael could tell, from long familiarity, that he was also listening, sniffing, sensing for anything that was not as it should be. "Get whom?"

"That guy." Rest. He only wanted to rest.

Master Splinter shook his head without moving his eyes. "You are confused, Raphael. It was only your brother." He glanced quickly at the floor, at the desk. "I will bring you water. Then we will talk." He touched Raphael's arm, then left.

Raphael focused his energies and dragged himself upright. He was overwhelmed with exhaustion, and it was taking far too long to get his breath back, but he noticed faintly that his arms didn't hurt anymore. When he had settled against the wall, he turned his gaze to where Splinter had looked.

There was nothing on the floor. On the desk - his book. Exactly as he had left it.

Splinter returned with the glass of water, helped him hold it. His body resisted the input of more liquid, and he swallowed slowly, carefully. It soothed the crawling feeling in his throat.

Splinter set the glass on the desk, then brought the stool closer and settled himself on it. It was a little too high for him to sit on easily, but he managed it with a grace that disguised the difficulty.

"Michelangelo has been very worried about you," he said. "He has been making a gift for you." He gestured to the wall behind Raphael's shoulder.

Raphael remembered the tall, thin object. He turned, half-expecting to see an old fishing pole.

The object was, crudely, unmistakably, a crutch.

"He hasn't come to talk to me," was all he could think to say.

"He is afraid," Master Splinter said. "He is not speaking much to anyone. He believed he had lost you." His tail curled around the leg of the stool. "He will not come until he is sure he will not lose you again."

"Then he should never come," his mouth blurted, while his mind thought about how much he missed his brother's constant noise and motion.

Splinter looked at him sharply. "Why do you say this?"

He hadn't intended to say it at all, but the reasoning unraveled inside his head. "Because," he said. "Because he's gonna have to lose me someday. Because I'm not gonna let him go first."

"These are promises beyond your power to keep," Master Splinter said, "and eventualities beyond Michelangelo's will to consider. He wants only for you to come safely through your present troubles."

"I know." Michelangelo felt things deeply, but not lastingly. His emotions focused on the _is_ rather than the _was_ or the _will be_. Sometimes Raphael wished he could let go so easily. "Tell him to stop being an idiot and come visit me."

Master Splinter smiled, his tail uncoiling and flicking through the air. "I will tell him. Although maybe in different words." He slid down from the stool, giving every sign that the serious conversation was over. "Donatello asked me to change your bandages when you awoke." He began systematically opening the room's various drawers and cabinets, searching for a clean roll.

"Fourth drawer on the left," Raphael advised.

"Thank you, my son." Splinter found the bandages and, coming to the bed, placed them in a fold of the blanket. He began to unknot and unwind the dirty cloth on Raphael's right arm.

"Where is Donnie?" Raphael asked.

"He is resting," Splinter replied. "He watched the monitors last night. Leonardo is watching now."

Raphael could feel his internal clock ticking now, keeping track of the hours since he came back to his senses. He didn't know _which_ hours they were, though. "What time is it?" he asked.

"It is nine o'clock on Friday morning."

Friday morning. He had talked to Leo the previous evening, and Leo had said two days since the attack, which would have been Tuesday. Yes. It had been Tuesday when they sent him out to get dinner.

Tuesday when everything went wrong.

Splinter's fingers had stopped moving on his arm. "Raphael," he said. "What were these bandages for?"

It seemed like a strange question. Obviously, they were to prevent him from bleeding all over the infirmary. "Sword wounds?" he guessed, trying to provide a more substantive answer. "Don didn't say, specifically."

"I must speak to Donatello," Splinter said, already moving away.

"What's wrong?" he asked in alarm. He didn't hurt anymore; he didn't feel an infection coming on. He couldn't imagine what had disturbed his father so much. "Master Splinter?"

But he was leaving, the clean bandages still tucked into the pocket of the sheets.

Raphael looked at his arm, afraid of what he might see.

It looked like his arm, the way it always looked. It didn't look like an arm that had been attacked by twenty men with swords. _Donatello didn't say..._

He felt his grip on reality slipping away like a thin fish.

* * *

Despite the exhaustion circulating leadenly through his veins, fear kept him awake for the twenty minutes it took Donatello to arrive.

"What's happening to me?" Raphael asked at once.

"I don't know," Donatello said tiredly. "I haven't looked yet." He plunked a mug of coffee next to Raphael's glass of water, and rubbed his eyes. He hadn't bothered to put his mask on.

"What took you so long to get here?" he demanded.

"I'm running on empty, Raph," Donatello said, washing his hands in the battered metal sink. "We all are. Give us a break, okay? We're doing the best we can, and wounds that heal overnight hardly sounded like an emergency." He wiped his hands on a fresh towel, taken from a stack inside a cabinet, and came over to the bed. "Now what's going on here?"

"You tell me," Raphael said, presenting his newly unbandaged arm.

Donatello took the arm in his hands and looked closely at it. He traced the grain of the skin with his finger. "There's nothing here," he said faintly.

"How can that be?" Raphael asked. The question had been circling in his mind for twenty minutes, prompting another one to rise into his consciousness. "Did you lie to me, Donnie?"

"Did I _lie_ to you about your being stabbed?" Don stared at him in astonishment, in disbelief and disappointment. "What possible reason could I have for doing that?"

"I don't know." Lines of cause and effect flashed through his mind. "How is it possible that I got hacked up with swords and not even three days later the cuts are completely gone?"

"It isn't."

"So what am I supposed to believe?" he asked desperately. _Please Donnie, anything. Any reason. Just give me something to hold onto._

Don picked up his coffee cup, drank some while watching Raphael over the rim. He lowered the mug, holding the rich beverage in his mouth a moment before swallowing. "A chemical," he said. "Something that accelerates healing."

_Yes. No._ "Why would anyone put a chemical like that on a weapon? I don't think the Foot were trying to gently incapacitate me."

"No." Don's fingers twitched in the air, palm out, his elbow braced on the back of his other hand, the one still holding the mug. It was a thing he did when he was trying to chase down a train of thought. "A chemical with two functions. A healing agent that hides the evidence of something else."

He was suddenly, acutely aware of his own insides. _Something else_ could be anything. "How do we find out?"

Donatello was pacing now, his fingers still describing phantom figures. "I can't. I don't have anything." He cursed under his breath. "Need a blood lab, need diagnostic equipment..." He turned suddenly and brought his fists, his mug, crashing down on the desk. The mug and the glass jumped, their contents swinging wildly. "What am I supposed to do with a crummy microscope and a blood pressure cuff!"

Fear jumped into Raphael's throat, stung him with burning tentacles. He pitched forward, coughing wetly, uncontrollably.

A shallow bowl appeared in front of him. "Let it out," Don was telling him. "Don't try to breathe yet."

He hacked, deep in his throat. A thick ball of mucus ejected into the bowl.

"Good." Don's hand on his back. "Now breathe."

He breathed like there was only one lungful of air left in the universe, drew all of it into himself. It bubbled down, upsetting the liquid filling the space it wanted to occupy. He coughed again, forcing the foreign wetness up and out. He was dribbling. He didn't care.

The bowl came up, scooping the dangling threads from the edge of his mouth. "You're okay," Don was saying. "Breathe again."

The consuming need to cough left him and he fell back, panting. Don's hand slipped around to his shoulder. "You're okay," he said again. The hand squeezed reassuringly.

He couldn't speak yet, so he nodded convulsively. Don left, taking the bowl away. Then he was back, warming the stethoscope in his hands. "Just breathe," he said.

There was nothing Raphael wanted to do more. His entire being was intensely occupied with breathing. He barely noticed the metal disk sliding under his shell.

"Okay," Don said. "Breathe, Raph."

He inhaled as if it was the most important thing he would ever do.

"Okay," Don said again. The metal disk slid away.

"What?" he said. It was all he could manage.

"It's not good," Don said, folding the stethoscope in his hands. "But at least we know what it is. We can fight this."

"Going to fight," he said.

"I know you will." Don hung the stethoscope around his neck and moved away. He emptied the bowl and rinsed it out, then dragged the stool closer and set the bowl on it. "Use this. Cough up as much as you can." He reached out and pulled the blankets up, tucking them close around Raphael's sides. As he drew his hands away, he scooped up the roll of bandages, catching it as it tumbled from the sudden hill of the bedding. "There's not much else I can do for you."

Raphael blinked heavily. Whatever was inside him - natural or introduced - was dragging him down. He was losing the battle to stay awake.

"It's okay, Raph," he heard, dimly. "You can sleep."

He touched the words, gratefully, held them close and brought them down with him.

He did not dream.


	4. Chapter 3

When he awoke, the first thing he saw was his father. Splinter was sitting in a chair that hadn't been there earlier. Someone must have brought it for him, so he could sit comfortably without moving the metal bowl from the stool.

He tried to say something, but his mouth was sticky and all that came out was a grunt. He realized he'd been sleeping upright.

"How do you feel?" Master Splinter asked.

He reached for the bowl, worked his tongue around, and spat out the gunk that had congealed in his throat while he slept. "Not as bad as earlier." He checked his internal clock. "Did I really sleep for six hours?"

"It is almost four-thirty," Master Splinter said, by way of reply.

_Yeah._ He flicked his gaze to the desk. Don's coffee cup was gone, presumably to accompany its owner about his business. The book and the glass of water - refilled, he noticed - were still there. He wasn't thirsty.

"Raphael," said his father, and his attention returned automatically. "Is there something you wish to talk about?"

His thoughts darted in all directions, like a school of fish trying to confuse a predator. Could he possibly be in trouble? Was his father going to take him to task for failing to defend himself?

"Why did you believe there was an intruder in the lair?" Master Splinter prompted him.

_Oh. That._ He wasn't sure he did want to talk about it. He didn't want to know if he was insane.

His father's gaze was burrowing into his head. When Master Splinter asked him if he wanted to talk, he was never able to say no, no matter how much his mind screamed for him to remain silent.

His mouth had given in before he even finished that thought.

"There was a guy," he was saying. "I saw a guy. Here. Talking to me."

"When was this?" Master Splinter asked.

"Last night." He drew up a corner of the blanket, played with it. "I don't even know if he was real. It might have been a dream."

"Dreams can tell us much." Master Splinter shifted his weight, orienting himself fully towards his son. "What was this person like?"

"He has this voice." His eyes unfocused, seeing what he had seen then. "He says these things, and they don't make sense, but I believe him anyway." He snapped back, returning his father's gaze. "Am I crazy, Sensei? What's wrong with me?"

"I do not think you are crazy," Master Splinter said, and Raphael heard echoes of that other voice. "What does this person say to you?"

"He says..." _I am the angel._ No. He was not going to say that. He needed to believe that his father believed he was sane. He couldn't hold it together without that validation. "He made me drink something."

Master Splinter looked alarmed. _No. Please. I can't be crazy._

"No," he corrected himself. "He didn't _make_ me. He told me to. And the bottle - it was empty. It didn't make any sense, I didn't want to, I -" He squeezed his eyes shut, turned his head away. "I drank it. Sensei, why...?"

"Something about this person makes you trust him," Master Splinter surmised. Raphael could only nod. "Have you seen this person before?"

"Yes. Once." He crossed his arms, unconsciously curling in on himself. "In the alley, after I was attacked. He told me help was coming. I thought that was real, but - maybe I was already unconscious." He felt his insides twisting up. More words came spilling out. "I told Don but he said no one was there."

The question he couldn't bear to ask again hung between them. Master Splinter answered it anyway.

"I do not think you are crazy," he said. "I also do not believe that such a person has come into our home. But," he held up a finger when Raphael looked at him with a sick expression, "I do believe that you have experienced something. Perhaps your subconscious is -"

Another feeling was rapidly growing in Raphael's guts. "Master Splinter," he interrupted. "I'm sorry, but I _really_ have to go to the bathroom."

Master Splinter was out of his chair immediately, moving the stool out of the way and bringing the crutch to the bedside. "Of course," he said.

Raphael threw the covers off and levered himself out of the bed as fast as he dared. His ankle was in agony in spite of his best efforts to keep his weight off it. He collapsed onto the crutch, onto his father's shoulder, and hobbled from the infirmary with all the speed he could manage.

"Do you need assistance?" his father asked when they reached the bathroom.

"No," he said, grabbing the doorframe and dragging himself inside. "Thanks. I got it from here."

* * *

When he came out, feeling infinitely better, Master Splinter was waiting for him, putting a hand on his back and turning him towards the infirmary.

"No," he said, casting a desperate glance out across the living room. Leonardo was ensconced in the surveillance station, completely focused on the monitor screens. Donatello was on the far side of the room, attacking the training post with an angry energy he rarely displayed during practice. "I don't want to stay there anymore. Let me sit on the couch?"

His father's gaze pierced him, and he tried to look healthy. "Very well," said Master Splinter. "For a little while."

He kept his weight centered, not moving forward. "I don't want to go in there again." Reasons far beyond simple hatred of the infirmary unspooled in his head. "I don't want to sleep there. I don't want to see him. I - I'm afraid of what I'll do."

"I will not let anyone come," Master Splinter said. Raphael didn't know if that was a promise his father could keep. He didn't know how to express what he was really afraid of.

"Please, Father... stay with me tonight?"

He felt his father breathing against him, the familiar warmth and softness of his fur. "Yes, my son. I will watch over you."

A tenseness he didn't know he was holding flowed out of him. "Thank you."

Master Splinter steered him to the couch, balanced him while he sat down. Leonardo paid no attention, but Donatello finished his routine - a vicious thrust to a wooden paddle, a hard reverse block - leaned his bo staff against the wall, and crossed the room. He dropped onto the middle cushion of the couch, next to Raphael. Master Splinter padded away.

"How are you feeling?" Donatello asked, without preamble.

"All right," he said. "Ankle hurts."

"You should be keeping it elevated."

As if on cue, Splinter returned with a cushion from his room, which he placed on the coffee table. Groaning, Raphael raised his foot and rested it on the pillow. "Thanks," he said again. Master Splinter disappeared in another direction.

"Let me look under these other bandages," Donatello said. Raphael offered his left arm, and Don began to unwrap the cloth.

Splinter returned again, deposited the metal bowl, the glass of water, and a roll of clean bandages on the table, and went away in a third direction.

"What's with the weapons training?" Raphael asked. It was too awkward to say nothing while his brother picked at his arm. "Nothing to fix?"

"No." Don didn't lift his eyes from his work. "Needed to think."

"You never practice to think." Raphael watched his forearm emerge from the linen. "You work. You clean things."

"Nothing to clean." Don set the re-rolled bandage on the couch next to him. "This arm looks okay too." He slid to the floor to start on Raphael's left thigh. "Mike's been taking care of the cleaning."

Raphael stared at the top of his brother's head in shock. Absently, he noticed that Don had put his bandana on. "Mike cleaned something?"

"Mike cleaned _everything_," Donatello said, working the bandage around Raphael's knee.

"And he made this too?" Raphael tapped the back of his finger against the crutch. Don glanced up and made an affirmative noise. "Do I want to know what he made it _out of_?"

"As far as I know, spare piping, various gauges; some fabric of unknown origin; and what appears to be duct tape."

"_Duct tape?_" he spluttered.

"Don't worry," Don said, his fingers now working nimbly around Raphael's ankle. "He soldered the weight-bearing joints." He leaned back, flicking the used bandage onto the table. "Raph, you have got to tell me about this new miracle cure you've discovered."

"Didn't you know?" Raphael shifted his weight so Don could unwrap his other leg. "Blood-letting and mystery chemicals are good for you."

"How do you feel about blood-letting and a band-aid?" Don asked.

_Disinclined._ "What for?"

Don paused in his work. "Just because I don't have everything I want, doesn't mean I shouldn't use what I have. I'm at least going to have a look in the microscope."

"And in relevant-to-me words, that would be...?"

"A poke in the finger."

"Thought so." He shifted again, accidentally put too much weight on his injured ankle, and yelped.

Don sighed. "Hold this," he said. Raphael pinned the half-unwrapped bandage with his finger, holding it in place on his lower thigh. Don scooted around and propped his shoulder under Raphael's knee, helping to keep the weight off his ankle, and began unwrapping the separate bandage for the more serious injury.

The outburst had roused Leonardo from his hyperfocused state in front of the monitors and brought him out into the main room. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Just Raph re-injuring himself," Donatello replied. "You'll be lucky if this isn't broken now," he said over his shoulder, "and _you_," he glanced sideways, "look awful. I told you, not more than four hours."

"What?" Leo rubbed his bloodshot eyes. "What time is it?"

"It's five," Raphael said.

"It's time for Mike to take a turn," Donatello said firmly.

"Yeah, okay." Leo went to stand under the railing closest to Mike's room, tilted his head back and raised his voice. "Mikey! It's your turn to watch!"

Michelangelo shouted something back, but Raphael couldn't catch it.

"Yes!" Leo replied. "Yes, he did. ... No, I don't care." He listed to what was apparently a very long complaint. "_Now_, Mikey." He returned to the couch and leaned over Raphael's foot. "How does it look?"

"Well, it isn't worse," Don said. "But it isn't better." He reached for the clean bandages and began tightly rebinding the injury. Leo folded himself onto the floor. "Go to bed, Leo."

"In a minute. I need to talk to Raph."

They exchanged a look. "Fine," said Don, tying off the bandage. "But then, straight to bed." He slid out from under Raphael's knee and stood up. "And finish taking off that other bandage." He looked at both of them, shook his head, and left.

"What's up?" Raphael asked immediately. It was often a good idea, with Leonardo, to act as though you were in control of the conversation.

"How are you doing?" Leo asked, sliding a bit closer and picking up the bandage where Raphael was still holding it.

"Okay," Raphael answered guardedly. Leonardo was obviously warming up to extract fathoms of unintended information from whatever answer he gave. "How are _you_ doing?"

"Tired," Leo said, and Raphael could tell that he was maneuvering for control via the Holy Power of Honesty. "We can't stay on high alert indefinitely, Raph. I need to know it's safe to come down. I need to know what happened in the alley." He lowered his voice. "Do you think the Foot were staking the place out? Waiting for us?"

"Maybe," Raphael said softly. Then: "Why are we whispering?"

Leo flicked his eyes to the side, indicating something over his shoulder. "I don't want him to hear. He doesn't need to know."

Raphael looked. Somehow Michelangelo had snuck into the surveillance center without his noticing. "Why are you asking me? Why don't you just go out and get the guys who did this?"

Leo finished unwrapping the bandage and squeezed the roll tightly in his hand. "Believe me, Raphael, there is nothing I want more than to conduct a lesson in what happens to ninjas who gang up on other ninjas who are minding their own business. But I need to know that's how it happened."

"Yeah, pretty much."

Leo was staring at him. There was something desperate in his eyes. "I need you to tell me."

"Yes." _A flash of sudden swords, shadows surrounding._ "They jumped me out of nowhere. I couldn't fight them."

"Okay." Leo straightened himself out and stood up. "Thank you." He started to move towards the staircase, and bed.

"Leo?"

"Yeah?"

"One more thing." Raphael felt his brother pause beside him. "If we're going to wear clothes... we have got to practice fighting in them."

The look of surprise on Leo's face was quickly obscured by a hand. "You're right," he said. "You're right, Raph. I'm an idiot."

He rested his head on the back of the couch. "No, Leo. We're all idiots. It's not like we don't see our sensei wearing clothes every day."

"Yeah." Leo wiped the hand down and off his face. "I'll talk to him." He made as if to do it right then.

"Go to bed, Leo," he said. He hated telling his older brother what to do, but sometimes someone had to.

"I just -"

"Leo."

A long pause. "Okay."

He listened to Leo walk up the stairs. Then he turned his attention to the TV remote, lying just out of reach on the far end of the coffee table.

* * *

He had just about determined that he was going to go for the remote, screw his ankle, when Don came back.

"Good going, Raph," he said bitterly. "We're still on high alert, and now we have to search the alley."

"Says who?" he demanded, pretending he hadn't just been about to do something likely to cause him further injury.

"Says Leo." Don leaned over the back of the couch by Raphael's shoulder. "He said that you said that the Foot are staking out the places we like to go."

"_What?_" He rapidly replayed the conversation in his head. "How did he get that from _maybe_?"

"You have to ask? We're talking about _Leo_."

"Damn, Donnie, I didn't -"

"Too late now." Don's weight left the cushion. "Time for your blood-letting. I'm going to go find a really _dull_ knife." He headed towards the kitchen, passing Splinter, who was coming in the opposite direction. Splinter came around in front of Raphael and held out a spoon full of a mysterious, multi-colored powder.

"You must take this," he said, and again Raphael heard echoes of another voice.

"What is it?" Raphael asked, taking the spoon.

"Donatello told me that you may have been poisoned," Master Splinter said. "And you say you are having visions." He pointed to the spoon. "This reacts with many hallucinogens. If your visions are artificially induced, this will remove the cause." He watched his son's face carefully. "It is safe."

Raphael looked at the powder. Long experience had taught him that while Splinter's remedies generally worked, it was almost always better to avoid tasting them. He closed his eyes, stuck the spoon in his mouth, and forced the dry stuff down in one swallow.

When he opened his eyes, Master Splinter was offering him the glass of water. He took it and drank half without pausing. "Also," Master Splinter said while he drank, "there will be... evidence."

"Hmm?" He balanced the glass on the arm of the couch. "Evidence of what?"

"If there is poison." Master Splinter took the spoon back.

"I don't get it," he said. "What kind of evidence?"

Master Splinter shifted awkwardly. "It will be obvious," he said, and used Donatello's return as an excuse to leave quickly.

Donatello had brought a knife - which was, in fact, quite sharp - a smooth rectangle of glass, and, as promised, a band-aid. "Hand," he said.

Raphael held out his arm and looked determinedly in the opposite direction. Michelangelo was still silently watching the flickering monitors. He felt a prick in his finger, the press of something wide and flat, and then the stickiness of the band-aid.

"Have you been coughing?" Donatello asked.

"No."

"You should." Don inserted the metal bowl into his still-outstretched hand. "Otherwise, that garden hose thing is still on the table."

He didn't feel like coughing, but he made his diaphragm jump and spat out the slime that bounced into his mouth. "Happy?"

"Delighted," Don deadpanned. "Are you hungry?"

He tilted the bowl, watching the slime ooze across the metal. "I could eat."

"I'll get something." Don took the knife and the bloody glass and disappeared into his lab.

Raphael put the bowl down next to him and looked forlornly at the remote. Whenever Don expressed a vague intention to do something, corresponding action often didn't materialize until weeks later. He could starve to death before his brother came out of the lab. He was determined to at least be nominally entertained while he wasted away.

He had just calculated the optimum trajectory for launching himself towards the remote while causing minimum damage to his ankle, when suddenly the desired object was right in front of his face.

Mike was standing at the other end of it.

"Thanks," he said, closing his hand around the plastic. Mike was gone before he could say anything else, silently reinserting himself into the surveillance center. _Damn that kid is fast._

He turned the TV on and stuffed the remote under his thigh - a defensive habit he'd picked up at some point. The program was something vapid about humans living in suburbia and hating their neighbors. Images and dialogue arrowed into his brain and went just as quickly out the other side.

Dinner came eventually, in the form of a bowl of soup. Donatello sat and ate with him, though his mind was clearly elsewhere.

Raphael attempted conversation. "Thought you would have chained yourself to the microscope by now."

"Can't," Don said. "If I started, I wouldn't stop, and I have other things to do tonight."

"You guys are all gonna go have fun without me?"

Don poked at a floating bit of celery. "Just me and Leo. Mike's going to stay and keep watch."

Raphael drank the rest of his broth. "Nah, let him go. I'll watch. I'm not too sick for that."

"You should be resting," Don said, finishing his own soup. "He doesn't want to go anyway."

Raphael looked at Michelangelo's back. "He's still pretty freaked out, huh."

Don sighed heavily. _Isn't it obvious?_ "You should talk to him. He's waiting for you."

"_He's_ waiting?" Raphael exploded. He didn't care that Mike could hear him. "What the hell for? A map and a push in the right direction?"

"You're not the only one who got hurt, Raph," Don said. He stacked up the bowls and spoons. "Talk to him." He went away into the kitchen. A moment later, before Raphael could decide anything, Don had come out again and crossed the room, leaning over Michelangelo's shoulder and talking quietly to him. Whatever was said resulted in Mike going directly upstairs, and Don taking his place in the chair.

He contemplated the stairs briefly. His ankle felt swollen and he had extremely little faith in his lungs' ability to support any kind of physical effort. _Forget it. I'm not gonna chase him all around the freakin' lair._

He watched television.

* * *

He floated in a kind of low-oxygen haze, not comprehending any of what he was seeing. A hand on his shoulder brought him out of it.

Leo was there, looking completely refreshed. "Raph? You awake?"

He reached up to rub his eyes, letting go of the glass he'd forgotten was still in his hand. Leo caught it before it could slide to the floor. "Barely. What's up?"

"Rumor has it you're sleeping upstairs tonight."

He groaned. "Don vetoed it, didn't he."

"I don't think he knows yet. And," Leo moved the glass to the table, "what Don doesn't know, he can't complain about." He looked over to the surveillance center, where Don was still watching, though perhaps not as alertly as one would have liked. Raphael knew that Leo knew that Donatello was virtually asleep. He also knew that Leo knew that Donatello was virtually unwakeable.

"Master Splinter..." he began, and stopped himself. He didn't know if Leo knew what he had asked his father to do, and wasn't sure he wanted him to know.

"Is coming," Leo said, and Raphael still didn't know whether Leo knew.

"Okay." He flexed his toes to see whether it would set off an explosion of pain in his ankle. It did. "I'll wait for him. I'll never make it up the stairs by myself."

"I'll help," Leo said. "It'll be easier with someone your own height."

He snorted. "Guess we're gonna have to tell Donnie, then."

Leo looked miffed. "I'm not _that_ short."

"Give it up, Leo." He pushed himself into a more upright position on the couch. "You're a midget."

"Yeah," Leo said, reaching down and pulling him to his feet, "but I'm the midget who can kick your butt seven ways from Sunday whenever I feel like it."

"In your dreams, maybe." He reached for his crutch, and began the arduous trek towards his room.

He had to stop halfway up and concentrate on breathing. It felt like his lungs were getting worse. After a moment he made himself move on. They reached the upper level and he leaned heavily on the crutch, temporarily forgetting its dubious construction. When he was ready to face the last few yards, Leo brought him to the door of his room.

"No, wait," Raphael said, turning his head towards the next door along the wall. "There's something I gotta do first." He shifted all his weight to the crutch and limped forward. He knocked on the further door. "Mikey?"

No answer.

He knocked again. "Mike, can I come in?"

A muffled reply he could barely make out. "Yeah."

He pushed the door open, stumped in, closed it behind him. "Hi."

Michelangelo was in his bed, wrapped up in every blanket he possessed. They hunched over his shoulders like folded wings. His gaze was elsewhere. He didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you this morning," Raphael said. "I didn't mean to."

"'S'okay," Mike mumbled. Raphael couldn't tell if he was doing anything, or if he was just sitting.

"Thanks for the crutch," he tried. "It's a good job."

It was a good job, too. It had been meticulously sized for Raphael's height and length of arm. It had a scrap of fabric taped around the foot, to provide traction, and what might have once been a curtain wrapped around the uppermost part, for padding. The soldering was sturdy without being overdone.

"And for the remote," he prompted, when Mike didn't answer. "Would've hurt myself trying to get it," he joked. Still no answer. He tilted sideways, trying to bring himself into Mike's field of vision. In response, Mike also tilted, falling over onto his side. He pulled the blankets over his head.

"Can't look at you now," he said in a strained voice. It was the first thing he had said with any meaning.

"Why, Mike?" He limped two steps closer. "What's happening with us?"

The ball of blankets contracted. "Don't make me!"

He wanted a lot of things, in that moment. He wanted to threaten, to force. He wanted his brother to look him in the eye and say "Glad you're okay, Raph." He wanted to breathe without hurting. He wanted things to make sense. He wanted things to be the way they always were.

He decided to do what he always did before going to bed. "Good night, 'Gelo-mold," he said.

"Good night, Giraffe," Mike said, possibly on automatic.

He backed up out of the room.

Leo was waiting, his back against the wall, his hands tucked under the curve of his shell. "Get anywhere?" he asked.

"No." He lifted his arm, and Leonardo slid under it. Together they went back to the other door, to Raphael's room. Raphael was relieved to see his familiar hammock. He didn't intend to move from it for some time.

He tumbled into it, gracelessly, gratefully, and Leo helped him get his legs up. There was no wall within arm's reach of the hammock, so Leo took the crutch and propped it against the low bookcase where Raphael kept his few possessions.

"I'll be right back," Leo said, and went out.

He rested for a moment, then rolled onto his side and reached down. His gear, as Don had promised, was stacked neatly on one of the crazily mismatched cushions that seemed to collect, of their own volition, on his floor. He traced his fingers along his mask and sai, assuring himself that they were real, were here. Then he moved them aside and picked up the shirt he'd been wearing. As he lifted it, it flopped in ways he wasn't expecting. Someone had laid it open from collar to waist.

"Holy shit," he said, mostly to himself, though Leo had just come back, carrying the extra chair from the infirmary. "How am I still walking around?"

"That wasn't the Foot," Leo said, kicking a cushion aside and setting the chair down. "That's where Donnie cut you out of your clothes."

He whistled backwards, a trick that none of his brothers could manage. It infuriated them. "Was it that bad?" His eyes traveled over the destroyed shirt. There were slashes all over the body and sleeves. Miraculously, the hood was intact.

"You were already unconscious from blood loss," Leo said. "We weren't about to waste time finding out where it was coming from." He went out again.

Raphael dropped the shirt and picked up the pants. They were similarly riddled with holes. He was definitely going to need new clothes. He threw the pants in the general direction of his garbage can and lay back down. Leo came in with the metal bowl and the glass of water, and put them on top of the bookcase. "Splinter will be right up," he said. "Do you need anything else?"

Raphael shifted, pulling the blanket over himself. "No. Thanks. I'm good."

"Okay," Leo crossed to the doorway and flicked off the light. "I'll see you in the morning."

He yawned. He wasn't in the habit of wasting time between wakefulness and sleep. "Night, Midget." He was asleep before the door closed.


	5. Chapter 4

In his dream, he was hovering over New York. His lungs seemed to be full of some previously undiscovered gas which both gave him boundless energy and provided exactly the right amount of lift to grant him neutral buoyancy in air. From his lofty position, he could see the warehouse that sat over the lair. He tried to move toward it, to go home, but he couldn't seem to control the height or direction of his float. The buildings of the city were moving, also, periodically obscuring his view of the warehouse.

Then Donatello was floating next to him, holding a bottle of thick glass. _Cough_, Don told him.

He coughed into the bottle. His lungs deflated just slightly, and he found he could steer himself by controlling his breathing.

Leo was there, too. _Good,_ he said. _Control your breathing, control yourself._ He started some meditative chant, folding himself into the lotus position in mid-air.

Michelangelo swam up beside him. _Let's go to Iowa!_ he said.

They did. It was full of sheep.

* * *

He woke up feeling terrible. He barely noticed Splinter, alert and watchful in the chair. He wondered when it had gotten so warm in the lair.

He realized he was in desperate need of a bathroom. "Help," he said, his throat too dry for more words. Splinter was at his side instantly, offering the crutch and his own shoulder. Raphael rolled out of the hammock, barely managing to stay upright on his one working foot, and attempted to convey through urgent motions of his head and arms the speed at which he wished to travel.

He made it to the toilet. He didn't think he could have lasted one more second.

* * *

He stuck his head under the faucet and drank deeply before leaving the bathroom. Master Splinter was waiting for him.

"What color was it?" Splinter asked him.

"What color was what?" he said blearily. His brain didn't seem to be working too well, and his father's question wasn't making any sense.

"When you..." Splinter's eyes darted around, looking anywhere but at his son. "... relieved yourself."

"Uh..." He hadn't really been looking. "Normal color?"

"Ah." Splinter finally came to his side and helped him towards the stairs.

It took a concentrated effort to divide his attention between walking and thinking. Speaking was just barely within the realm of possibility. "Master Splinter, what...?"

"There was no hallucinogen."

It took his mind a while to process that. _No..._ Then he understood. Splinter's medicine. Don's suspected chemical.

_There will be evidence._

There was no hallucinogen.

_Damn._

Somehow they had made it to the kitchen. He was already sitting down. He rested his head on the table.

"...feel well?" Splinter was asking.

"What?" he mumbled.

A hand pushed him back in his chair, then felt his forehead. The hand went away and he slumped forward again. His gaze bored vacantly through the wood grain.

Someone was saying his name. "Raphael." His father. "Put this in your mouth."

He forced one eye open, saw Splinter holding a thermometer. His arms were too heavy to lift. He opened his mouth and Splinter put the thermometer in for him.

He closed his eyes again. Waited, heard the beep, felt the thin device slide out from under his tongue. Heard his father hum.

"This cannot be right." A hand on his shoulder, urging him to stay in the present. "Raphael, did you drink something?"

The question was too hard. He groaned. Splinter went away.

The world was blessedly empty for a few minutes. Then people.

"I hate it when I'm right." Don. "C'mon, Raph. Take these."

He didn't care what they were. He took them blindly. Water. Swallow.

"Infirmary. Now."

He couldn't even move. Someone carried him. Words he couldn't understand and a warm circle on his back.

He didn't know if he was still awake.

* * *

He was in the infirmary again, lying on his back. It was exactly where he didn't want to be.

He sat up.

There was a thermometer in his mouth before he could speak. Don. He glared.

Don glared right back.

The thermometer beeped.

He took it out, blocking Donatello's grab, and looked at it. "Crud," he said.

"Crud is right," Don said, swiping the thermometer and reading the number. "Who told you you could sleep upstairs?"

He shut his mouth and staunchly refused to incriminate anyone.

"I keep telling you, that hammock is a health hazard." Don went to the sink and furiously washed the thermometer. "It's bad for blood flow and it can't be doing your back any favors. Why did you think it would be a good idea to sleep there when you can barely breathe?"

"I like it." He threw off the blankets. Too hot.

Don wheeled around, brandishing the thermometer like a weapon. "No more hammocks!"

He got out of the bed. "You touch my hammock," he said calmly, "I break every test tube in your lab." He looked to the wall. "Where's my crutch?"

Don pointed the thermometer again. "You. Bed. _Forever_."

"Make me." He bent forward defiantly and walked out on his hands.

* * *

It turned out that being upside-down wasn't good for his lungs either. He spent the next several minutes sprawled on the couch, coughing violently. Part of his mind, watching Don patiently hold the metal bowl, reflected that being sick was at least a good way to distract his brother from his fits of anger.

"On the subject of test tubes and my lab," Don said eventually, and Raphael marvelled at his brother's ability to hold onto a train of thought, "I didn't find anything unusual in your blood, aside from high concentrations of antibodies. Because you have pneumonia," he added, in case Raphael hadn't already figured this out, or wasn't feeling guilty enough for his failure to avoid illness.

"So there's no hallucinogen," he said dully.

"Not necessarily." Don set the bowl aside. "As usual, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

"Donnie." He pointed to his own head. "Sick. Use English."

"Just because I didn't find anything, doesn't mean there's nothing to find." He leaned back against the table. "It could mean that my equipment isn't good enough."

"There's no hallucinogen," he said again. "And if there's a healing agent, it isn't working."

Don was looking at him in a way he didn't entirely like. "You keep saying 'hallucinogen'. Is that the word you mean?"

"I know what I'm saying, Don," he said peevishly.

Don held up his hands. "I'm not arguing with you. I just don't know where you're getting this idea. I never ventured any guesses as to what the Foot might have drugged you with."

He really didn't want to talk about this. "It doesn't matter. 'Cuz it's not there."

"No, I said -"

"Splinter checked. It's not there."

A long pause. _Damn. Said too much._

"Why did Master Splinter think -"

"Don." He really, _really_ didn't want to talk about this. He rolled over and stretched out across the couch. Splinter's cushion was still on the table; he grabbed it and stuffed it behind his head. "Drop it. It doesn't matter."

"Have you been seeing things?" Don pressed. "Hearing voices? That could -"

He didn't let Donatello finish that sentence either. "What part of 'drop it' is causing problems for you?"

"Gosh, Raph." Don's ire was rising again. "Maybe the part where you're having symptoms you didn't tell me about. That would be another item for your list of stupid medical decisions. Decisions which are, actually, causing a lot of problems for me."

"Whatever," he muttered. Meaningless phrases were a good way to win an argument with Donatello. His doggedly logical brain couldn't get any traction against them.

"No, not whatever." Don shot down the paper obstacle. "You're a terrible patient. That just means I have to be a better doctor."

They regarded each other for a moment. Raphael could tell that Don was abandoning the interrogation strategy, and was now going to focus all of his considerable observational skills on his sick, secretive brother. He was going to have to be careful. He was going to have to think before he spoke.

He heard Leonardo's soft, measured footsteps coming down the stairs. He thought fast. _Leo might know what I said to Master Splinter. Move conversation to another topic._

"So," he said casually. "Did you guys go out last night?"

"Yeah, we did." Leo perched on the arm of the couch, by Raphael's feet. "How are you feeling?"

"Great," he said quickly. "You find anything?"

Leo looked at Don, but Don was keeping silent. "We found a camera," Leo said. "Definitely Foot issue."

"Any Foot?"

"No." Leo frowned. "No one was there, and no one came. Either they're not monitoring their feeds, or they're waiting for something else."

"So you just smashed the camera and came back?" He'd been hoping for a more interesting story. Don wasn't distracted enough yet.

"No, we brought it home." Leo glanced at Don again, waiting for him to say something, then continued. "Don might be able to figure out a tracing system. Find out if the Foot are watching any of our other hang-outs."

Raphael spotted the flaw in the plan instantly. "Don't you think the Foot might have put their own trackers in the camera?"

Don couldn't resist responding to that. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Raph, but I destroyed anything that could possibly record information or send a signal _before_ we came underground." He looked briefly at Leo. "Which doesn't leave me a lot to develop a tracing system from."

"At any rate," Leo said, "we won't go to that pizza place anymore. And we need to be careful where else we go. The Foot could have cameras anywhere."

Don rubbed the ridge between his eyes. "I said it was _possible_. I didn't say it was _likely_."

"And what percent risk is acceptable to you?" Leonardo asked sharply. When Don looked appropriately cowed, he asked, "What are the chances the Foot could have infiltrated _our_ surveillance systems?"

Don glanced over at the monitors, which were currently being watched by Splinter. "Well, it wouldn't exactly be _difficult_ to feed us a loop of an empty sewer. But," he added quickly, "that's assuming they were able to either find my hardware or hack my firewalls. Which I highly doubt."

"Check anyway," Leo said. "We have no idea how long they might have been working on this."

"Maybe they're not working on anything," Raphael said, even as the word _tracker_ hung in his thoughts. "Maybe they just got lucky on Tuesday, and thought they'd be clever and stick up a camera in case we were dumb enough to come back."

"Well, that's the question," said Leo. "Did they get lucky, or were they waiting? Did they put the camera there before or after the attack?"

"What did they know," Don mused, "and when did they know it."

A lame joke came to mind, and he spoke without thinking. "Are they now, or have they ever been, members of the Foot Clan?" As the words went out, some part of his brain reeled them back in. It seemed like the question had been floating just below the surface, waiting for a hook to draw it up. _A tracker._ He held onto it.

He realized his brothers were staring at him.

"Sorry." He scrambled to cover for his bizarre outburst of free association. "I thought it was cliché historical questions time." The incident didn't seem to be quite smoothed over yet, so he kept talking. "Y'know, Donnie, you're not the only one who watches the History Channel."

"You only watch for the war specials," Don said. "And while this is all very fascinating, I apparently have to go run diagnostics on my security systems, and then walk the tunnels to check every single camera for bugs. So I'd better get going." He stood up and headed for his lab.

"What is up with him?" Raphael asked, as soon as Donatello was out of earshot. _Yes. Change the subject._ He turned back to Leonardo. "What's up with _you_? You're even more paranoid than usual."

"Someone has to be." Leonardo sighed heavily and looked at his feet. "Our enemies don't take a break because we're angry, sick, and hiding from each other." He stood up. "Do you need anything?"

He looked at the table. The remote was conveniently within reach. "No." _Yes._ "Wait. My crutch."

"Where is it?"

"Don't know."

"I'll look," Leo said, and went to do exactly that. A few minutes later he came back, propped the crutch behind the couch, and headed off on his own business.

"Hey Leo," Raphael said suddenly. Another thought was swimming out of the fever haze of his mind, attracted by that word. _Tracker._ He heard his brother stop. "Tuesday night. Why did you come after me?"

There was a pause. Then: "You don't know?"

"Would I be asking?"

Leo came back. "I was setting the table when my phone rang. It was you - I mean, the call was from your phone - but you weren't saying anything. So I grabbed Don and Mike and we followed you." He tilted his head. "You don't remember calling?"

"I didn't call," Raphael said. He was sure of it.

"Maybe you hit the button by accident."

Raphael was about to deny ever touching the phone, but Don was coming across the room, crossing the threshold of hearing range. He kept his mouth closed.

Donatello was carrying his bo and a duffel bag stuffed with tech gear. "Diagnostics are running," he said. "They'll take a couple of hours. In the meantime, I can do the unnecessary but time-consuming legwork you so generously assigned me. Maybe I'll step on a _land-mine_. That would be exciting."

"If you want me to come," Leo said, "you can just ask."

"No." Don hiked the bag onto his shoulder. "I don't need any help." He turned to go.

"You know what," Leo said. "Take Mike."

"I said I don't need any help."

"Take him anyway. He hasn't been out of his room all day and I'm tired of his attitude."

"Very nice." Don stormed towards the stairs. "I'll just solve that problem too. Thanks, Leo."

"You're welcome!" Leo shouted after him. Don's only reply was to stomp more loudly. "I can't do this anymore," he muttered. "I'll be in the dojo if anyone wants me, though I'm sure they won't." He went away.

A few minutes later Don came downstairs, trailing a silent and reluctant Mike. They left the lair, sealing the door behind them.

The lair was quiet again, but this time he didn't like it.

_This has got to stop. Someone has to do something._

His head hurt. Thought came slowly. He pushed methodically through the list of people who might do something, and came to the conclusion that 'someone' would have to be him. None of his brothers had any more to give. A few more minutes of thinking led to the conclusion that he didn't know what the 'something' was, but that he did know someone who might point him in the right direction.

He flung out his arm, grabbed the crutch and hauled it over to the front of the couch. He held it there for a long moment, mustering the energy to get up.

He stood in one fast push - _Better to get it over with_ - and then realized that strategy wouldn't work for the next thing he needed to do. It was going to be a long slog.

He was intensely relieved, when he finally reached the surveillance center, to see that Master Splinter had long since noticed him coming, and had vacated the chair. He lowered himself into it and rested his head against the high back.

"How are you feeling?" Master Splinter asked.

_Like crap_, he thought, but he said, "Not too good."

"I am sorry, my son. You seemed well during the night -"

"No," he said. "It's not your fault. I should've listened to Don." He rolled his head forward. "Or to what he would have said if I'd bothered to ask him." He took a moment to gather his wayward thoughts. "Sensei - I'm worried about us. About all of us."

Master Splinter, perched on the edge of the console, went into full-on Wise Teacher mode. "There is great strife in our home," he said. "This dishonorable attack by the Foot Clan is very upsetting to your brothers."

"It's more than that," he said, pulling up his uninjured leg, jamming his bare knee under the arm of the chair. "This wasn't a single attack. Something is still happening. Keeps happening."

Master Splinter mirrored his posture. "Your visions."

"They're not right, Sensei. They're too real."

"This is sometimes the case."

He was afraid to go any further in that direction, so he backtracked. He hoped desperately that Splinter could give him a convincing argument for what he wanted to be true.

"What if they aren't visions, or hallucinations? What if I'm just imagining it?" He struggled to remember their previous conversation. "What were you saying about my subconscious?"

"The subconscious is very powerful," Master Splinter said. "Dreams can fool us into believing we are awake. The things you imagine may be powerful enough to affect the physical world."

"Then why can't I imagine something better?"

Master Splinter looked at him sadly. "Raphael, you have been greatly hurt. Your spirit is trying to excise the damage. You cannot recover until you face what has happened." He smiled faintly. "You must have already begun, for your wounds to heal so quickly."

"Have I?" He looked at his arms. Old scars, but no trace of his recent trauma. "Did I…?"

"Modern science is only beginning to recognize the ancient wisdom of mind over matter." Master Splinter straightened into a meditative posture. "You have a powerful spirit, Raphael. These things are not beyond you."

"I don't care about this," Raphael said, with a twitching gesture that encompassed his overheated forehead, his abused lungs, his ruined ankle. "I want to fix _us_. Leo, Don. Mike."

Splinter looked across the lair, at the evidence of their lives. "Your brothers are also hurting. For themselves, and for you, through the connection you share. They cannot be healed by an act of your will. To do so would be to ignore their need to face what has happened, in their own way."

Raphael had heard this before. He and his brothers had always had a connection, something deep and reptilian, beyond even Splinter's ability to sense. As an inexperienced parent, Splinter had assumed that it was a normal understanding between siblings until Michelangelo had begun to regularly inform him that his brothers "smelled" happy, sad, or afraid. Having already been disappointed to discover that his sons were nearly anosmic, Splinter quickly recognized that his most distractible son had an innate talent for sensing energy fields and an unusual tendency to perceive them as odors. Soon after, he realized that Michelangelo not only sensed energy, but was able to exercise some control over its flow. Splinter had immediately ordered the untrained child to stop playing with his brothers' chi, to little effect.

"How can I make them do that?" Raphael asked. He recognized Splinter's you-have-not-been-listening expression and changed his wording. "How can I help them start?"

"You must begin with yourself," Master Splinter said. "Show them the way, and they will follow." His ears twitched, as though he were listening to something else. "I have not had a chance to ask you - did you have any of these visions, or dreams, last night?"

"No," he said. He could feel part of his mind ticking slowly, putting something together. _Begin with yourself._ "I mean, I had a dream, but it was okay. It was just a dream."

"What was it about?" Splinter asked.

"Um..." He tried to remember, but the images were fading. "We went to Iowa."

Master Splinter looked surprised, which was unusual, but he recovered quickly. "Why do you think you dreamed of Iowa?"

"I don't know." The other part of his mind was clunking like a stuck gear. "I don't even know where Iowa is."

"That is not true," Splinter said. "You are very good at geography."

It was true that his mental maps were as impeccable as his internal clock, but it was also true that his brain only drew maps for places he had visited in person. And he had certainly never been to Iowa.

The gear slotted into place and suddenly he knew what he wanted to say. "Sensei," he said. "The visions - the dreams - that _guy_ - he only comes when I'm alone." Master Splinter didn't answer immediately. "I was alone on Thursday night, right?"

"Yes," Master Splinter said slowly, checking his own memories.

"And I was alone in the alley." He was picking up speed now, seeing how the engine of events worked. "Every other time I was asleep or unconscious, someone was with me. The guy only comes when I'm alone."

"Even though he does not physically exist," Master Splinter said, following in the wake of Raphael's thoughts. "Your subconscious shuts him out when other minds are near."

Raphael's well-oiled mental train abruptly crashed into a wall. "Which means whatever this is... I have to face it alone." He suddenly felt terribly far away from his father.

Master Splinter stood up and touched his son's hand. "Recovery is a two-fold path," he said. "There are parts you must walk alone, and stretches where your family can guide you. It is a long road, and one that you have begun well."

His eyes turned inward, and he watched the wheels of the train spin furiously in the air. "I have to sleep alone tonight."

"No, my son." Master Splinter leaned forward, trying to catch Raphael's gaze. "Why do you hasten away from us? Rushing to heal will only lead to a half-healing."

He watched the engine explode, igniting each of the cars behind it. "No," he said. "This can't wait."

* * *

When Don and Mike came back several hours later, he was lying on the couch, reading his book.

"Hey," said Don. "Where's Leo?"

He stuck his finger in the book. "Dojo."

"Okay. We need to talk about some things." He tagged Mike on the arm as Mike tried to sneak upstairs. "You stay." Don crossed the room and rapped smartly on the door of the dojo, then crossed back and disappeared into his lab. Mike stood rigidly in place. He glanced sideways, saw Raphael looking at him, and tried to find a way to stand that would hide himself from his brother's vision.

Leonardo came out, sheathing his swords. "What's the news?" he asked. Mike only shuffled his feet and shook his head.

"I'm coming!" Don called, ducking from the lab into the infirmary. He emerged a moment later and came towards them with his hands full. He addressed Raphael first. "Did you eat or drink anything in the last hour?"

"No."

"Good." He produced the hated thermometer from the tangle of stuff in his hands. "Take it. No arguing."

Raphael took it with his best imitation of good grace.

"Now." Don dumped the rest of his things on the table and parked himself on the floor. "The systems are clean. No bugs, no spyware. Can we _please_ get off high alert."

Leonardo was standing, rather than sitting or leaning, near Raphael's head. "You're sure? There's nothing?"

Don glared up at him. "I can't believe you're even asking me that."

Leonardo practiced his penetrating gaze on Don. "Okay," he said finally. "Watch is cancelled. Mike -" He made a vague gesture, and Michelangelo went to the monitors. Raphael couldn't tell if Mike spoke or not - the thermometer chose a most inconvenient moment to beep - but Splinter abandoned his post. He and Mike came to the couches as Don stuck his hand out and Raphael passed over the thermometer. Don glanced at it cursorily. "I still want that tracer," Leo said, pointing to the partially-dismantled camera on the table.

"Yes, Leo," Don sighed.

"It is getting late," Splinter said. "I will prepare dinner. We will eat together."

And just like that, a semblance of normalcy was restored.

But only a semblance. Michelangelo fled for his room; Don poked moodily at the camera; Leo looked at them all and then followed Splinter to the kitchen.

"So," Raphael said. "Am I still sick?" He felt less hazy, but breathing was still a chore.

Don sorted out his tools. "Your fever is down, at least."

"You know," he said conversationally, "this isn't nearly as bad as last time."

"Of course not." Don picked a diminutive screwdriver from the pile and attacked a tiny screw. "Have I taught you nothing about the immune system?"

A snide response came to mind, but he kept it to himself. Just in case he couldn't fix what was wrong with them while he was sleeping, he was going to try to fix it while he was awake. Not further aggravating Donatello seemed like a good place to start.

Don worked silently, methodically taking apart the camera and laying out the various pieces on the low table. When it seemed there would be no further conversation, Raphael unfolded his book and began reading again.

He had no sooner gotten back into the flow of the narrative when Don decided he had something to say.

"This hallucinogen of yours," he began, while his fingers untwisted a knot of wires. "Does it have anything to do with the man with the fishing pole?"

Raphael lowered his book and looked at his brother incredulously. Don's eyes were on his work. "How do you do that?"

Don glanced up. "Do what?"

"Do you remember _everything_?"

Don put down the battery pack he'd been dismantling. "Why yes, Raph, I do listen when you talk to me." He pointed at his brother with a tweezer. "I also notice that you're avoiding the question. Which means I'm right."

He snorted. It burned his throat. He rolled onto his side, dropping the book, grabbed the bowl, and coughed vigorously.

"Hardly," he said, when he'd gotten his wind back. "You're screwing around with me. You're trying to get me confused so I'll tell you what you want to hear."

"Is that so?" Don opened the plastic casing and popped out the button batteries. "Pray tell what it is I'm fishing for."

"Slick, Don. You've been practicing your Jedi mind tricks."

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Don said airily.

"'Fishing'?" He reached forward and picked up one of the camera lenses, disturbing Don's neat arrangement of parts. _You're not the only one who can play games._ "Could it be that you're trying to jog my memory about a guy with a _fishing pole_? Is there some small possibility, just some tiny chance, that you're so desperate to find a connection, that you're trying to trick me into constructing a false memory?" He rolled the circle of glass in his fingers. He noticed that his band-aid had fallen off at some point. "Pretty sad, Don."

"Indeed." Don compulsively rearranged the rows of camera parts. "It would be almost as sad as your wild invention of nonexistent mind-altering drugs in order to pretend that the confusing and unwelcome things that were happening to you _weren't really happening_."

He was pretty sure that whatever game they'd been playing, Don had just changed the rules. "Say what?"

Don picked up the broken pieces of the camera's transmitter card and slotted them back together. "You thought you were having hallucinations. There's no evidence that you _are_ having hallucinations. That means that something you were hoping was only in your head, is real." He looked up. "What is it?"

Raphael was momentarily speechless. "Damn, Donnie," he said at last. "How do you do that?"

"There is a straight line between any two points," Don said, inserting the cracked transmitter card into a small device, which was in turn attached to his PDA. "All you need is a pencil and a straightedge."

He put the lens down. "Where can I get some of those?"

"You have them, Raph," Don said. He poked some buttons on his PDA. "You just don't use them enough." He mumbled something at his equipment, then laid it aside and picked up the batteries, fitting them into some kind of scanner. "So what is it you don't want me to know?"

"I can't tell you," he said heavily.

"Why not?" Don put the scanner down. "Why have you been acting like I'm out to get you?"

He turned the bowl around and around, looking at his distorted reflection in the brushed metal. "If I was going to do something, and it was something that might be dangerous, would you try to stop me?"

"Sometimes I feel like I spend my entire _life_ trying to stop you from doing dangerous things."

"So...?"

"Yes. Yes, I would try to stop you."

_I have to face this alone._ "That's why I can't tell you."

* * *

Dinner was an awkward affair. It was the first time they had all eaten together since Tuesday's disastrous dinner-retrieval mission. Raphael's stomach was resisting food, Mike was unwilling in a general way, and Don hadn't entirely dropped the subject of what Raphael was intending to do, even though he was managing to refrain from actively demanding answers.

Splinter was trying desperately to stimulate conversation. "I have never seen the kitchen so clean," he said. "Thank you, Michelangelo."

"Welcome," Mike mumbled. It was obvious that he was trying to avoid attention.

_So much for normalcy_, Raphael thought.

"So," Leonardo tried, when no one said anything. "What's happening tonight?"

"Someone needs to put the sheets back on the cot," Don said. "They're in the drier."

"What are they doing there?" Raphael asked.

"You sweated on them appallingly," Don told him. "I thought it would be nice if you had clean sheets tonight." He watched Raphael's reaction closely. "Please tell me you weren't planning to sleep upstairs."

He was saved from having to answer by Leo's compulsive honesty. "Don, I'm sorry," Leo said. "I let him go upstairs last night. I thought it would be okay."

Raphael used the temporary reprieve to work on the problem of how he would arrange to sleep in his room, alone, without letting on why he wanted to.

"No hammock tonight, Raph," Don said. "I forbid it."

"I'll sleep on the floor," he said. Plausible reasons why this was better than sleeping in the infirmary were not coming to mind.

"I wish you wouldn't," Don said. "I really hope you're not doing these things just to spite me."

"No, I -" He blanked. _Excuse! Now!_

"Can't we put the cot upstairs?"

_Where did that come from? I didn't -_

He realized everyone was looking at Mike.

"Would that be okay?" Leo asked anxiously, turning to Don.

Don looked at them all. He looked longest at Master Splinter, and Raphael had the feeling that something he couldn't read was passing between them.

"Fine," Don said. He pointed his spoon at Michelangelo. "You get to help me move it."

The conversation turned to a stiff discussion of local news, mostly centering around the on-going clean-up from the alien invasion. Raphael tuned out, his thoughts consumed with the task he had set for himself.

* * *

Don and Mike had dragged the clunky old bedstead upstairs and put the sheets on it while Raphael sat on the couch feeling useless. He wanted to do something, to distract himself from what might happen when he went to sleep. He wanted to go to bed, so that whatever was going to happen would be over with that much sooner.

Leonardo sat down next to him and reached for the remote.

He faked a huge yawn. "I'm wiped," he declared.

Leo retracted his hand. "Do you want to go upstairs?"

"Yeah." He reached for his crutch. Leo pulled him to his feet, and they started towards the bedrooms. It wasn't any easier than it had been the day before, and this time he didn't even have the comforting motivation of his father coming to watch over him. There was nothing waiting for him but a bed he didn't like and the looming possibility of an unpleasant encounter with a strange, potentially imaginary person. Dread coalesced in the pit of his stomach, adding to the weight of the liquid in the bottom of his lungs. His body was too heavy to lift; for a fleeting moment he fantasized about leaving it behind and continuing his life as a floating pair of eyeballs. Then the bed was in front of him and he fell into it.

Don and Mike had adjusted the boxspring to sit within arm's reach of the floor, so Leo laid the crutch just under the rusty bedframe, where Raphael could lean down and grab it.

"You'll be okay?" Leo asked worriedly.

"Yeah." He propped himself on his elbow and punched the pillow a few times. It had been too many days since he'd hit anything. He looked up at his brother, hovering uncertainly in the doorway. "Hey. Don't let Donnie rag on you. If he's got a problem, he can take it up with me."

"No, I shouldn't -"

"Leo." He waited for his brother to come back from his guilt-laden reverie. "Ya done good. We're safe. We're gonna be okay."

"I'm glad someone thinks so," Leo said. It wasn't clear which statement he was responding to, but Raphael could tell he appreciated the vague compliment. "Good night, Raph."

"Night, Paranoia-Boy."

Leo turned off the light and went out, closing the door behind him. Raphael lay in the dark, his mental fingers hovering reluctantly over his sleep-switch.

There was a soft knock at the door.

"Come in," he said.

Splinter entered, carrying the small decorative gong he kept in his room. He set it on the floor by the head of the bed, along with the accompanying soft-headed mallet.

"If anything happens during the night," Splinter said, "use this. I will hear it."

The light from the doorway was falling over his shoulders, outlining him sharply while leaving his face in darkness. He was casting a Splinter-shaped shadow onto Raphael's blanket-shrouded form.

"Thanks."

Splinter leaned forward and kissed Raphael on the forehead. "Sleep well, my son." He backed out of the room and shut the door softly.

Raphael lay in the dark. _Now or never._ He breathed as deeply as he dared, once, then flipped the switch. Immediately he plunged into a darkness more penetrating than the mere absence of light.


	6. Chapter 5

In his dream, he was back in the infirmary. He was playing chess against Master Splinter, and playing it badly. His friends were ranged around the room - Casey, the Daimyo, Traximus - and every time Splinter captured one of his pieces, Leonardo slaughtered someone brutally. Sydney, Angel, the homeless professor.

_I don't want to play anymore_, he said.

_This is not a game, Raphael!_ Leonardo shouted at him. _This is real!_

_No_, he said. _I don't want to play._ He put a finger on his king, to tip it over and forfeit. As soon as he did, Leonardo's sword was at Splinter's throat.

_You can't quit the game_, Leonardo said.

He took his finger away. He moved a pawn instead. Leonardo moved among his friends. Silver Sentry, Usagi, Mr. Mortu.

Splinter made an illegal move with his queen, threatening both of Raphael's rooks.

_You can't do that!_ he complained. _The queen doesn't move that way!_

_Make your move, Raphael_, Splinter said icily.

He looked up. Leonardo had drawn his other sword, and poised both of them. One over Mrs. Morrison. One over that kid. Tyler.

He brought his hand up and flung over the board, scattering the pieces across the floor. His queen came to rest at April's feet.

Calmly, Splinter reached his hand inside his robes and drew out a pouch. He shook the contents into his palm, and, with a breath, sent the powder swirling through the room.

His friends began to cough, choke, and die. They fell, tumbling on top of each other, while Leonardo stood passively.

Leatherhead, only just saved from the hunter.

Professor Honeycutt, who had fried his circuits to end the senseless war.

Zog - brave, honorable Zog – whose sacrifice had been in vain.

_No!_ He scrambled to pick up the pieces, but they melted and slid through his fingers...

* * *

He woke in a dark room. The young man was there, as bright as ever. It was as if he moved around in his own personal spotlight.

"Hey," Raphael said. "I gotta lot of questions for you."

"Ask," said the bright man.

He was momentarily dumbfounded. He had expected the man to dodge, to obfuscate. He cast a net over his thoughts before they escaped.

"In the alley," he said. "When did you get there? And why did the Foot run away?"

"I was manifest," the young man replied. "I sent visions to drive them."

_Visions._ "You made them see things that weren't real?"

The man watched him passively. "I do not understand."

"Real. You know. Actually existing." He sat up. His visitor didn't react to the decreased distance between them. "Are _you_ real?"

"There are many truths..." he began.

"Forget the mystic mumbo," he interrupted. "Just tell me if this is happening. Are you here? Is this a dream?"

"I am real to you, Raphael."

_That's it. I'm insane._ "What did you make me drink? Was it a drug that makes me hallucinate you?" He realized as he said it that the statement would crumble at the first touch of logic. He went back to the thought he'd had earlier, the hook that held his ideas in place. "Are you with the Foot?"

"I am not 'with' anyone."

"Everyone is with someone." In the world as he knew it, that was truth. "Did the Foot put a tracker in me? Is it messing with my brain? When did this really start?" _When you were blind._ "How long have they been watching me?"

"I am not your enemy, Raphael," the young man said. "I am not your ally. I serve my own nature."

This scared him more than the idea that his strange visitor was a new plot by his old enemies. "Which is what?" he said. "To be obscure?"

"I cannot explain these things," the man said. "I am ineffable."

"What does that mean?"

The young man shook his head. The same bottle from two nights ago was suddenly in his spotlit hand. "You must drink this."

Raphael shot his hand out and knocked the bottle to the floor. _Chess pieces scattering..._ "Why should I trust you? If you're imaginary, you can't help me, and if you're real, you _aren't_ helping me. You're doing something to my family. You're hurting them."

The young man bent to pick up the bottle where it had rolled under the bed. Watching him, Raphael saw the fishing pole, exactly where Leo had left his crutch.

"It is not my nature to hurt," the young man said, straightening up and offering the bottle again. "You must drink this."

"Then why did you keep my father from me when I called him?" His gaze darted to the gong at his bedside, and he calculated how quickly he could grab the mallet. "Why didn't you come when he stayed with me?"

"These things are not as they appear to you," the young man said. "These are things you must face alone."

_His friends falling by the sword._ "Why?"

"It is the only way you can come back to yourself. It is the only way you can help the ones you care about."

_His friends falling by the poison._ He took the bottle. "Don't hurt my family," he whispered.

He drank.

* * *

He woke in a dark room. He felt himself falling, and flung out an arm. He was suddenly aware of the lumpy mattress against his back and legs, and wasn't sure if it had been there half a second ago.

He was breathing heavily.

It took him a minute to figure out why that felt wrong. Then he realized - he hadn't breathed like that in _days_.

His ankle was burning as though he had just slammed his leg against the bed, and it distracted him from the pleasant sensation of air flowing effortlessly in and out of his body. He sat up and rubbed the sore joint gingerly. Pain sparkled around his touches.

It was eight o'clock on Sunday morning.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, kicked up the crutch with his good foot, and stood. He decided it was time to look like a healthy person again.

He navigated through the drifts of cushions to where he'd left his gear and bent down to disentangle his mask from the pile. His fingers brushed against his phone, and on a whim he picked it up. He flipped it open and pushed buttons to bring up the call history.

The most recent entry was an outgoing call to Casey, from a week and a half ago.

He dropped the phone, yanked his mask from underneath the crumpled sweatshirt, and straightened up. Now that his head and his lungs were clear, it was easy to balance on one foot. He propped the crutch against his chest while he tied the familiar fabric across his eyes.

_Come back to yourself._

He was ready to face the day.

* * *

Mike was in the kitchen when he got there, prepping the coffee machine.

"Don didn't do that?" Raphael asked, as he rummaged in the refrigerator for juice. "He must have gone to bed late." Late-night crashes were the only thing that kept Donatello from his bedtime ritual. He was obsessive about the routine. He couldn't function in the morning until he had coffee in him, and prepping the machine was not on the short list of things he could manage pre-caffeine.

Mike didn't answer. He put the lid on, knelt, and buried himself in the cabinet below the counter.

Raphael reached for a glass, poured the juice, and carried it to the table. "You're up early," he commented, pulling out his usual chair and sitting in it.

Mike hummed noncommittally, extracting himself from the cabinet and reaching up to put a box of pancake mix on the counter.

"I like where this is going," Raphael said. He was determined to talk, even if Michelangelo refused to answer and was still avoiding his eye.

Donatello stumbled into the kitchen then, his mask slung over his shoulder. He swatted at the coffee machine until it turned on, and slumped into his chair.

Mike was busily mixing ingredients in the biggest bowl they owned while the griddle warmed on the stove. "Morning Donnie," he said.

_'Morning Donnie'? What happened to 'Morning Raph'?_

"Hey," Raphael said, poking Donatello's uncovered elbow. "You look wrecked."

"Nnnn," Don replied.

Splinter came in, looking characteristically unruffled. "Good morning, my sons." He sniffed the air. "What are you making, Michelangelo?"

Mike spooned the batter onto the pan, then turned from the stove, glanced shiftily around the room, and said: "Pancakes."

Within seconds Leonardo had appeared in the doorway, eyes wide, mask in hand. "I heard pancakes." The coffee maker burbled happily and he automatically reached to pour some of the steaming liquid into a mug, which he set on the table in front of Don. "I didn't know we had any more mix."

"Found it when I was cleaning up," Mike said. He set down his spatula to pull five plates from the cabinet. Splinter went to the silverware drawer and began setting the table while Donatello attempted to organize his body parts so he could drink.

_He's talking to everyone but me_, Raphael thought. _Why is he still like this?_

Leonardo put his mask on while he waited for Don to get down a few sips of coffee. "Any luck with the tracer?" he asked.

"Yes and no." Don snapped the purple bandana off his shoulder and fixed it around his head. "As I suspected, it's impossible to extract useful data from a broken transmitter. But I slept on it and I realized I've been going about it all wrong."

"How so?" Leo said, as Mike slid plates of hot pancakes onto the table.

Don meticulously cut his pancakes into bite-size triangles while Raphael simply rolled his up and started eating. "This isn't a hardware problem. I shouldn't even have been looking at the camera. I _should_ be hacking the Foot's network and tracing the data stream from that end. By the way," he pointed his fork at Raphael. "I don't suppose you took your temperature before you started eating?"

Raphael, caught with half a pancake in his mouth, tried to swallow. "Was I supposed to?"

"It might have been a good idea." Don twirled his fork back into eating position. "Finish eating and wait an hour."

Splinter spoke into the break. "Did you sleep well, my sons?" His gaze lingered on Raphael.

They all murmured assent.

_Later_, Raphael said with his eyes.

"This hacking thing," Leo said. "Can you do that today?"

"I could have done it Tuesday," Don said. "I've been so busy, I just didn't think of it."

"Oh, and Sensei," Leo put down his fork to address their father, "Raph was saying that we should practice fighting with clothes on. I think it's a good idea."

Splinter looked mildly surprised. "I was under the impression that you normally removed your clothes to fight."

"Yes, but -"

"Takes too long," Raphael supplied. He flashed back to that desperate fumble, the handles of his sai hopelessly tangled in the capacious folds of his shirt.

"We will begin training again when Raphael is over his illness," Splinter said. "I will see how you move in clothes."

"And on the subject of illness," Don said, pushing his plate back and glancing at Raphael, "I want to listen to your lungs later, and your ankle should be looked at again."

"Oh, yeah." His eased breathing had faded into the background and slipped his mind. "You're gonna want to do that soon."

Don paused with his coffee mug halfway to his mouth. "Why?"

"Actually," he said, getting out of his chair and reaching for his crutch, "you're gonna want to do it now."

* * *

The infirmary looked strangely empty without the bed in it. Someone had taken away the extra chair, but the stool was unoccupied. He sat on it.

Don caught up to him a minute later, having paused to clear his place. "What's going on?" he asked, opening a drawer. "Do you feel worse?"

"Just do the thing, Donnie." He wanted an unbiased opinion. "And for god's sake, warm it up first."

Don disentangled the stethoscope from whatever else he kept in the drawer, and pressed the metal disk between his hands. "Have you thought any more about this dangerous thing you want to do?"

_Too late, Donnie._ "Sort of."

"'Sort of'?" Don fit the bulbs of the stethoscope into his ears. "What is 'sort of'?"

He lowered his head so Don could slide the disk down the base of his neck. "Well, I kinda already did it."

"Breathe in, and tell me you did not go out chasing the Foot last night."

He breathed in. "No, I definitely didn't do that." The disk slid further down, stabbing against the sensitive place where shell fused to skin. "Ouch, Donnie."

"Breathe," Don said.

He breathed. The disk slid out and then Don was in front of him, pulling the stethoscope from his ears and crossing his arms. "Raphael," he said, very seriously. "What did you do?"

"Why?" he asked. "Am I still sick?"

"No, you have full lung function. Are you going to tell me how that happened?"

He grinned innocently. "You know. Immune system."

Don narrowed his eyes. "I don't care how many times you've had pneumonia, you don't get over it in one day."

"Well, it's that mind-over-matter thing." He stood up. "Splinter said I was doing a stellar job imagining myself well."

Don pushed him back down. "What the shell is going on, Raph? Why are you giving me these stupid excuses?"

"Hey, it's not my fault you're not at one with the whole spiritual healing thing."

It was a low blow. Once, when they were younger, Michelangelo had rearranged Donatello's chi to the point where he accidentally caused Don to come down with a strange malady that took all of Splinter's spiritual and homeopathic knowledge to cure. The incident had had the twofold effect of getting Mike to finally take his abilities seriously, and increasing Don's belief in the existence of unmeasurable energies, though he was left with a lingering discomfort with and mistrust of the whole concept.

"Neither are you," Don retorted. "Last time I checked, you were not a master of meditative regeneration." He threw the stethoscope, barely bothering to aim for the drawer. "Tell me what is going on."

No excuse in the world was going to help him now.

"Not here," he said. "And bring everyone, because I'm only going to say this once."

* * *

They assembled on and around the couch, watching him expectantly. Don, cross-legged on the floor, stone-faced and waiting for answers. Leo, unsure what was about to happen and ready to face any new danger. Splinter, who already knew most of the story. And Mike, hunched at his father's feet.

"First tell me what happened," Raphael said. "Between when I went out and when I woke up."

Leo glanced around, then spoke up. "I already told you part of it. After my phone rang, we took the Slider and followed you. Mike was first aboveground, and you weren't exactly hidden, so he was first to find you. He thought that you -" He paused, still uncomfortable with the idea. "Weren't with us anymore, but Don found a pulse. He worked on you while Mike stood guard and I cleaned the blood off the ground."

"No one else was there," Don put in. When Leo looked at him oddly, he just looked right back.

"When Don thought you were okay to move," Leo continued, "we brought you home. You were unconscious for two days. I think you know the rest."

"Okay," Raphael said. "Here's what I saw." He paused to gather his thoughts. One more moment of reprieve. "I was lying on the ground getting stabbed to death when all the Foot just up and ran away. I opened my eyes and there was this one guy still there. Yes," he said, when Don opened his mouth. "He had a fishing pole."

"What?" Leo said blankly.

"I knew it," Don said. "I was right."

"I don't understand," Leo said, looking back and forth between Raphael and Donatello.

"Let your brother continue," Splinter said.

"He stayed with me," Raphael said. "Then I heard you coming, and then I passed out."

Leonardo was calculating possibilities in his head. "Which way did he go?"

"I don't know. I never saw him leave."

"Once we were under the alley," Leo said, his eyes ticking back and forth as he thought, "it only took us seconds to get topside. He must have been very fast."

"I don't know," Raphael said again.

"What do you remember next?" Donatello prompted.

"I woke up in the sick-room," he said, ordering the images in his head. "I probably said something stupid. Stuff wasn't really making sense until later."

"Then skip ahead," Don said.

He fast-forwarded his memories. "Thursday night," he began, "I had some weird dream. Then I woke up and that same guy was there."

"Impossible," Don said immediately. "No one could get in here without setting off my alarms."

"_Unless_," he glanced at Splinter, "I was actually still dreaming. The first time I saw the guy - that might have been imaginary too."

"What did he do?" Leo asked. "Or what did you imagine him doing?"

"I called for you guys, but he said you weren't coming. Then he gave me an empty bottle and told me to drink it. And I did."

"Why would you do that, if you weren't sure it was only a dream?" Leo frowned at him. "You know how vulnerable we are to poisons. And you had no reason to trust him. That was stupid and dangerous."

"I know, but he -"

"Dangerous," Donatello interrupted. "You did something dangerous last night." His brow furrowed as he connected points A and B. "You tried to see him again."

He refused to be ashamed. "He's involved in all this, Don. There's something - I can't explain it. He might be the cause of what's wrong with us. He might be the only one who can fix things. I have to talk to him. I'm doing it for _you_, Donnie." His shoulders were rising with tension; he forced them back down. "I'm doing this for all of you."

"Go on," Leo said. "What happened last night?"

"I figured out that he only comes when I sleep alone," Raphael continued. "Which is why I wanted to sleep upstairs."

"You could have slept alone in the infirmary," Don said.

"Also I really hate that place." He refocused on his story. "I had this horrible dream about -" He didn't want to go there; he was sure that part had only been a dream. "Anyway the guy came again. I asked him if he was with the Foot and he said he wasn't with anyone. He said - I think he said he chased the Foot away, in the alley. But he said he wasn't our ally. So I don't think he's their enemy."

"So he's an independent entity," Leo said. "If he's real."

"Right. Then he gave me the empty bottle again and he told me I had to drink it if I wanted to fix things. So I did."

"All of which means what?" Don asked.

"I don't know." He glanced at Splinter, who was staring thoughtfully into his own lap. "I thought that maybe he was a manifestation of my subconscious, some weird focusing of energy. I imagine him and he helps me do things. Heal myself. Heal us."

"I don't believe it," Don said.

He ignored Don's expected reaction, plowing on with his theory. "But then I thought - what if he's real _and_ in my head? What if the tracker's not in the camera?" He looked at them anxiously. "What if it's in me, and it's doing something to my brain?"

There was a stricken silence.

"I'll get the metal detector," Don said.

* * *

He sat rigidly on the lab bench while Donatello ran the metal detector over every inch of his body.

"Could be sending electrical impulses to your brain," Don rambled as he worked methodically up and down Raphael's limbs. "Electrical stimulation does have some beneficial effect on flesh wounds... maybe some kind of iontophoresis to accelerate reabsorption of the fluid in your lungs... though the amount of time between when they would have had to implant it and when it must have started working is ludicrously short..." He mumbled incomprehensibly to himself, then brought his voice back to normal volume. "There's nothing here, Raph."

"Are you sure?" He remembered the last time someone had asked Don that question. "Maybe it's not metal."

Don drummed his fingers on the flat place above his mouth, processing that thought. "If the Foot had anything like what you're thinking of, Stockman would have designed it. And while he has access to the Saki fortune and several kinds of alien technology, I don't think he can change the properties of matter. Nothing non-metallic could conduct electricity well enough to have that kind of effect on a complex organism."

"Aww, you called me a complex organism. You do care."

Don rolled his eyes. "Not now, Raph. Whatever's happening to you, it isn't electrical and it isn't chemical. So the most likely candidate is biological. And biological processes simply don't work fast enough to go from implant to hallucination in the space of a few minutes."

_Unless it wasn't a few minutes._ "What else is there?" he asked. "I know you've got a theory."

"I've got two theories." Don held up a finger. "Either this person is real, and he is both very fast and able to repeatedly sneak past my security systems, or," he held up a second finger, "he is completely a figment of your imagination, in which case you _are_ imagining yourself well, and I take back everything I ever said about you having the spiritual resonance of a barbed wire fence."

He thought about the choices. He thought about the third option.

"Donnie," he said slowly. "There's one more thing I didn't say."

"What, that you're going to try to see that guy again? I already figured that out."

"Well, yeah." He picked at his leg. "The second time I saw the guy, he said... He said he'd been watching me way back when Splinter was missing. What if - could I have already had an implant then?"

Don's brow crinkled again. "When would the Foot have gotten it into you?"

He'd already thought about that. "What about that time Hun got me? Remember, when the invisible ninjas tried to follow me home? I was unconscious for a while. They could have done anything."

Don was shaking his head. "Raph, that was months ago. If the Foot implanted you then, they have the worst follow-through I've ever seen. And anyway..." He paused, remeasuring his mental angles. "The guy says he saw you. But did you see him?"

"Well, I was a little bit blind at the time," he sarcasmed. "But I never heard him, or sensed him, or anything."

"Then you didn't necessarily have the implant then," Don said. "The Foot might have heard about that incident, and somehow encoded it into an implant..." He looked at the mess of projects on his desk. "God, that would be advanced technology. To preprogram biological stimulation of specific memories... No. I'm getting mixed up." His fingers twitched, drawing his thoughts in the air. "They couldn't have implanted you on Tuesday, because it couldn't have started working so quickly, regardless of how amazing their biotech is. And if they implanted you way back when you got kidnapped, then they're not coming after us and the implant actually seems to be doing you more good than harm."

"Can you summarize that in small words?"

"Sure." Don held up one finger again. "There's a very fast and sneaky person whose motives we don't know, or you are the almighty god of the placebo effect, or you have a strange biological implant that accelerates your healing at the cost of occasional, mildly disturbing hallucinations. Which one do you like?"

"None of them." He picked up his crutch and limped back towards the couch, where the rest of his family was waiting. "But I want to know which one it is."

"Well, the second one is easy to rule out," Don said, as they exited the lab. "Stop imagining things."

"And the others?"

"Full-body exploratory surgery is pretty much out, and I don't know how much more secure I can make this place." They walked slowly across the room. "Besides, everyone knows you only manipulate one variable at a time."

"Oh, sure," Raphael said. "Everyone knows that." He sat heavily on the couch.

"Donatello," Splinter said, while Leonardo hovered anxiously and Mike attempted to make himself appear even smaller. "What have you found?"

"Smoke and mirrors," Don said. "Wild theories held together by the tiniest shreds of evidence."

"A simple yes or no would be nice," Leo said.

"It's a very probably no." Don quickly repeated his three theories, managing to skim over the extra bit of information that Raphael had confided to him.

Leonardo's mind singled out the solution he could deal with. "So you'll increase security?"

"No, I'm going to take a poke through the Foot's computer systems. If it looks like they're up to anything, _then_ I'll throw this place into Defcon 4. But first," he shinned the table closer to the couch. "I want to see if Raphael's ligaments have miraculously reattached themselves. Put your foot up."

Raphael grabbed the cushion that had wound up behind his back and tossed it onto the table. He noticed the rest of the family hadn't taken Donatello's last statement as their cue to leave.

"What are you all staring at?" Raphael demanded. He was tired of feeling like the target of everyone's voyeurism. "Can we get some doctor-patient confidentiality here?"

Splinter stood up. "I will be in my room if you have anything to report," he said. "Leonardo, Michelangelo, give your brothers some privacy."

They dispersed.

Raphael lifted his ankle onto the cushion and Don knelt to unwrap the bandage. "You seem happier," Raphael said.

"Sure." Don worked out the knot and began to unroll the cloth from Raphael's calf. "You're recovering at an astounding rate and you've stopped being shifty and defensive. If you can get Mike out of his funk, I'll be the happiest mutant turtle in New York."

"Not a lotta competition there, bro." He tilted his head. "All these evil plots aren't bothering you? They'd be bothering me, if I understood half of them."

Don slowed his work as he got closer to the injury. "At least I can do something about them now. You know I hate being in the dark."

"I'm sorry, Donnie." He steeled himself against the pain that was happening. "I thought I was insane. I didn't want you to know."

"You're not insane," Don said. He worked the bandage around Raphael's heel. "But I'm insulted that you think I wouldn't notice if you were."

"So?" he asked, as the end of the bandage came loose. "How does it look?"

"A little swollen." Donatello gently manipulated Raphael's foot. "Does this hurt?"

His face stretched into a rictus. "Yeah." He squeezed his eyes closed. "Kinda a lot." He gritted his teeth while Don did whatever he was doing.

"The skin has healed," Don said, beginning to rewrap the bandage, "but there's still internal damage. I'll look again tomorrow."

He waited for the throbbing to ease off a little. Then: "Why tomorrow?"

"Please, Raph. I'm not stupid. You're going to talk to that guy again. And whoever he is, whatever creepy things he says to you, things always seem to get better after you see him."

He leaned forward. "You're not going to try to stop me?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Donatello worked the bandage under itself, knotting it tightly. "Because for some stupid reason, despite mounds of evidence indicating that you are a foolhardy dissembler, I trust you."

He took his foot out of his brother's reach. "Because I'm a _what_?"

Don sighed. "Because Master Splinter keeps giving me these looks every time I try to keep you out of what distinctly resembles trouble. And now," he stood up and cracked his knuckles, "I have some inferior security systems to hack."

_Foolhardy dissembler?_ "Hey Donnie," he said, just before his brother disappeared into his lab. "Do we have a dictionary around here?"

"Sure. Why?"

_Why do you think?_ "I gotta look something up."

Don wasn't moving. "What's the word?"

"Just bring me the damn book, Donnie."

A few minutes later he had a dictionary in his lap. He waited pointedly for Don to go away before opening it.

He looked up _ineffable_.

Then, for good measure, he looked up _manifest_.

* * *

He was watching something non-war-related on the History Channel when Michelangelo crept in and tucked himself into the opposite corner of the couch. He thought about saying something, but decided it was better to remain silent and let his brother sit, than to open his mouth and scare him away.

Lewis and Clark had just sighted the Pacific Ocean when Mike said, "Leo doesn't know."

Raphael poked the mute button, shutting up the overwrought voice actor who was desperately pretending to be Meriwether Lewis. "What doesn't Leo know?"

Mike looked determinedly at the floor. "What he said, about what I thought. I wasn't wrong."

It took him a minute to figure out what Mike was talking about. _He thought you were dead._ "No, Mikey," he said. "No. I was okay." That was a ridiculous lie. "You must have missed my pulse."

"I didn't even look for one," Mike said miserably. Whatever he was trying to say, it was costing him a great effort to say it. "I smelled death on you."

Raphael understood immediately what his brother was telling him. It wasn't a physical odor Mike was referring to. It was one of the smell-sensations that his brain came up with when it tried to make sense of an energy field.

"I know," he said. "I felt it coming. But I didn't let it in."

"It _was_ in." Mike twisted his hands in his lap. "It was all inside you. Everywhere. It ate your energy."

He was dumbstruck. "But - I'm alive. It must have been, you know, that stopped-heart thing. Clinical death." Even that scared him.

Mike was shaking his head. "Everything was gone. Your _you-ness_ was gone."

Translating his talent into words had always been hard for Mike, but Raphael needed him to be clear now. "I don't understand, Mike. Tell me from the beginning."

Mike drew his legs up to his chest and buried his face between his knees. "When I got there," he said on a shuddering breath, "you weren't there. You weren't in yourself. Then some of you came back. Then Don got there and said you were alive. And then we went home. And more of you came back, and you woke up. But you're still not right."

"What's wrong with me? Where was I?"

"I don't know," Mike said to his feet. He peeked up and made a box with his hands, slowly crushing it. "You're... inside-out. You're not with us."

"Of course I'm with you." He wanted to hold his brother, but Mike was so folded in on himself. "I'm here, Mike."

"You're not _with_ us," Mike said again. "You're... disconnected." He finally looked up, and Raphael realized that Mike hadn't looked him in the eye since the attack, except for the brief incident with the remote. "Are you mad at us?"

"No, Mike. I'm not mad." He didn't know how to convey how much he wanted to be friends again. "I love you. I'll never leave you."

"Then why are you staying out?"

"Staying out of _what_?" He was completely lost. "Mike, I can't see what you see. I don't know what you're talking about."

"The web," Mike said in anguish. "You haven't come back."

_The web_. It was the name Mike had given to the tangle of energy that connected them. "I'm out of the web?" Suddenly everything made so much more sense.

Mike looked worried, confused. "You didn't know?"

"No, Mike." He tried to probe his energies, but only felt a vague discomfort where the pancakes were settling. "You know I can't feel it."

Mike slowly unfolded himself, turning sideways to face his brother. "I thought you would feel if it wasn't there." He froze. "You're not mad?"

"I'm not mad," he said again. He held very still, waiting for his brother to come to him. "I want to come back."

Mike reached out a tentative hand, his palm forward. "I can bring you back." He paused again, always hesitant since the incident with Don, always asking permission to move his brothers' chi. "Do you want me to?"

"Yes," he said, and found that it only took one word to say that he wanted everything to be all right.

He relaxed his mind and body as Mike focused on his hand, turning his wrist slowly. It all made sense. Splinter couldn't detect the web without Mike's help, couldn't have known what was wrong with them. Leo and Don, as chi-blind as himself, wouldn't have recognized the problem, but were nonetheless affected by the absence of their brother's familiar energy.

He was ready to come back.

Mike was frowning. "I can't," he said.

"It's okay, Mike," he said, trying to hold onto his quasi-meditative state. "I trust you."

"No, I _can't_." Mike closed his fist on invisible tendrils of energy. "It's moving away from me. Where is it going?"

"I don't know." Without thinking, he reached out and held his brother's hand. "I don't want it to go." Energy going away meant only one thing to him. "I don't want to die."

Mike brought his other hand up, joining it with the two already clasped between them. "I'm trying to hold onto it," he said. He closed his eyes, seeing the energy in his mind. "I'm not going to let you go."

* * *

They were still sitting like that when Splinter emerged from his room. "My sons," he said, "what are you doing?"

Michelangelo was sweating from the psychic effort, so Raphael answered. "It's my chi, Sensei. Mike says that I -" _died_ " - that I fell out of the web. He's trying to put me back, but it isn't working."

Master Splinter unfocused his eyes, looking at something that could not be seen. "Your chi has been very inward, Raphael. It has been staying close to you while you heal." He blinked. "I do not see any difference."

"Please." Mike tilted his head towards his father. "Look."

Master Splinter placed his hand on Michelangelo's head. "Is it all right if I do this?"

"Hurry," Michelangelo said.

Raphael knew that Master Splinter was joining his mind with Michelangelo's. It was a skill Splinter made Mike practice, even though Mike hated it. He said it felt like bugs crawling inside his head. For him to ask for it...

"No," Splinter said. "Michelangelo, stop."

Mike let go as though Raphael's hands had burned him, throwing himself back against the arm of the couch.

"Now look again," Splinter said. He had not lost his physical or mental connection. "What do you see?"

Mike opened his eyes and stared through Raphael's chest. "It's not moving," he said.

"Was it moving before you touched him?" Splinter asked.

"No," Mike said in a small voice.

Splinter broke the connection. "Raphael's energy is not fleeing from him," he said. "It is moving away from _you_, Michelangelo. It is not ready to be taken from him."

"I -" Michelangelo looked at Raphael with eyes full of horror. Then he leapt over the back of the couch and ran into his room.

"Sensei," Raphael asked fearfully. "What's happening to me?"

"You are not dying," Splinter said, and Raphael understood that he and Michelangelo had had a long conversation inside their heads, where time was distorted. "You are healing remarkably well." He sat in the place Michelangelo had vacated. "Your chi is powerful and not easily controlled. Your brother is not strong enough to move it against its will."

"He was only trying to help me," Raphael said. "I wanted him to do it."

"Yes," said Master Splinter. "And when your chi is ready to move outward, Michelangelo will be the one to guide it back to the web. But for now, you should rest. His efforts have exhausted your energies."

He did feel tired, as if he'd been holding his breath too long. "He won't want to try again."

"He will," Splinter said. "The well-being of our family depends on the strength of the web. He will not allow it to remain broken." He stood up. "Rest now, my son." He went quietly away.

Raphael settled more deeply into the couch and turned the television's sound back on. Lewis and Clark had just parted ways at the Continental Divide.

* * *

The kitchen was too quiet. Michelangelo could not be cajoled from his room, and Donatello's "one more minute!" lasted nearly until the others had finished eating. Eventually he joined them, empty-handed.

"There's nothing," he said, serving himself from the pot of macaroni Leonardo had made. "No data streams, no reports on relevant biotech. No videos, aside from some footage of an empty alley, earliest date stamp Wednesday morning, and those are already being purged from the system. There's not even any interesting gloating." He sat down. "It was all just an opportunistic hit-and-run. There's no big plot."

"It took you all day to find nothing?" Leo asked.

"No, that took about an hour." Don poked at the bright yellow pasta. "But Stockman had these really interesting notes on some new robotics..."

"You are absolutely shameless," Leo said, completely failing to conceal his pride in his brother's curious nature.

"Thank you." Don took a few moments to actually eat the food in front of him. "So, now that we've eliminated Door Number Three, what's our next move?"

"What do you think, Sensei?" Leo asked.

"I still have not sensed any intruder in the lair," Splinter said.

"Then I pick Door Number Two." Leo gathered up his and Splinter's empty bowls and took them to the sink.

"Congratulations, Raph," Don said. "You win amazing psychic powers."

"Thanks, Don Pardo." Raphael held out his bowl. "How about some more macaroni, the New York City treat?"

Don took the bowl, went to the stove and ladled out another serving. "So," he said, "am I off the hook for a while, or do you have more work for me?"

"No, nothing else." Leo leaned against the counter, letting the cheesy dishes soak. "Thanks, Donnie. You were great."

"No problem." He set the bowl back on the table and returned to his own dinner.

"Donatello," Splinter said. "Am I right in understanding that Raphael is no longer sick?"

"That's right, Sensei." Don clapped Raphael on the shoulder. "One hundred percent disease free."

"Then we will recommence our training tomorrow morning at seven." Splinter rose from his seat. "Please wear your surface clothes. Raphael, you may observe." As he went out, he added, "I will tell Michelangelo."

"Where is Mikey?" Don asked. "He never turns down macaroni."

"He wouldn't -" Leo started, but Raphael interrupted.

"Don't talk about him."

"Why?" Don asked.

"Just - don't." _Leo doesn't know._ "Okay? Whatever you're going to say, you're wrong."

"Uh... okay." Leo looked at Don, who looked back blankly. Then he looked at Raphael again. "Are you done?"

In lieu of a reply, he pushed his empty bowl across the table. Leo transferred it to the sink with one swinging motion of his arm, and turned the water on. "So what do you guys want to do tonight?"

"Dunno," Raphael said listlessly. "I'm tired of sitting around here, but I'm not going far with a busted leg."

"We could go upstairs," Leo suggested. "To the garage. Just to get some air."

"Yeah." Air sounded like exactly what he wanted. "Okay." He looked at Don, who was still picking at his food. "You gonna come?"

"All I really want to do is go to bed," Don said. He gave up on the macaroni and slid his bowl away. "I haven't slept decently all week."

"It's okay," Leo said. He glanced up at the clock. It was six PM. "Go get your twelve hours."

Don pushed himself to his feet, paused at the nearer counter to dump some coffee grounds into the machine, then brought his bowl to the side of the sink. "Thanks Leo." He gave his brother a quick sideways hug around the shoulders. "Sorry I was grouchy."

"You had every right." Leo's hands were soapy, so he dropped a fraternal peck above Don's ear. "Night, Donnie."

"Night, guys." Don went out, his dragging footsteps fading up the stairs.

"I think I'm gonna puke," Raphael said.

"I love you too." Leo looked over his shoulder. "Just give me a minute to clean up."

* * *

The garage echoed with the buzz of the fluorescent lighting. Don hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet. He also hadn't had a chance to put insulation on the concrete walls.

"Are you warm enough?" Leo asked as he opened the back doors of the Battle Shell.

"I'm fine." Raphael sat on the edge of the van's floor, his feet on the ground. He lay his crutch down behind him.

Leo crossed the grey space and hauled the big garage door open a few inches. The evening air swirled in, scattering the brown leaves that always managed to find their way inside at this time of year.

Leo came back and leaned against the inside hinges of the van. "Let me know if you get cold."

Raphael didn't answer. He was always the last of his brothers to feel the cold. It wouldn't be him asking to go downstairs.

They sat for a while in silence. It was good to breathe proper, gritty, you-can-tell-it's-been-used New York air again.

"You know what we should've done?" Leo said at last.

"What?"

Leo changed the angle of his lean, turning to face his brother. "We should've gone up to Casey's house. Gotten away from all this craziness."

"We still could." Even though Massachusetts air was too thin, too... gaseous. It wasn't air you could sink your teeth into. "It was good for you."

"Yeah." Leo laughed. "I got Casey's house, you got healing powers."

"You think so?" He hadn't really gotten a feel for Leonardo's state of mind post-serious-discussion. "I mean, what do you make of all this? There's been so much talking, I don't know what to believe."

"I believe all of it."

"That's impossible."

"No, not really." Leo gestured with an open hand. "I believe you when you say that you've been seeing this person. And I believe Splinter when he says the person isn't real, and I believe Donnie when he says there's nothing wrong with you."

_Which leaves what?_ "So you believe I'm a nutcase."

"No, I believe that you've tapped into some healing energies, and when you draw on them, you see them in your mind as a person."

"But I'm crap at meditation."

Leo looked at the ceiling. "I was scared of heights until I thought Master Splinter was in danger. Don didn't believe in telepathy until the Triceratons tried to tear his mind apart. You just needed a good enough reason to stop being... y'know."

"Crap."

Leo tilted his head, looking at Raphael sideways. "Have I ever mentioned that meditation is easier if you approach it with a positive attitude?"

"Few times, yeah."

They lapsed into silence again. Neither was in a mood to discuss Raphael's disciplinary shortcomings.

"So what does he look like?" Leo said. "Your spirit guide?"

"I don't know." He hunched up a little and looked at his feet. "Human-ish."

"Really?" Leo sounded intrigued. "Someone you know?"

"No. Why?"

"Sometimes when I meditate I see another me. And Master Splinter usually sees Master Yoshi. It's kind of odd that you would see a strange human."

"I wish I didn't."

"Have you tried asking him to change forms?"

He looked up. "Can I do that?"

"Sure." Leo was watching him steadily. "He's part of you. He's there to help you, but you're always in control. Never forget that."

Raphael reflected on that. Usually Leonardo told him that he was out of control. Actually being _in_ control of something about himself would be a novel experience.

He hadn't felt in control of anything since the attack. There were two whole days he didn't even remember.

"Hey, Leo," he said.

"Mm?"

"Do you remember, at the farmhouse, we told you stories to help you find your way back?"

"I know you did," Leo said slowly. "I don't really remember what you said."

"You know. Just some old stories." He remembered the desperate words, the endless waiting. "Did... did you do that for me?"

"Yeah. We did. Master Splinter was there all the time, talking to you." Leo paused, shepherding his thoughts, deciding whether to let them out. "Mike came too. He didn't talk, but he came." He eyed Raphael meaningfully.

Raphael recognized the ploy. "I'm not going to tell you what he said to me."

"I won't make you," Leo said. "Just tell me he's okay."

He dropped his gaze again. "I can't tell you that."

"Is there anything I can do for him?"

Leonardo hated inaction in himself, loathed uselessness. Raphael could see him poised on the edge of motion, ready to listen, to talk, to fix, to fight. Whatever Mikey needed.

There was nothing he could do.

"No," Raphael said.

There was nothing.

There should have been something.

Leo exhaled loudly and paced away from the van. He'd taken his swords when they'd come upstairs, just in case, and he looked now like he wanted to draw them, to send them slicing through the air, the sharp edges sinking into something, whether or not that something had anything to do with what was wrong with Michelangelo.

There should have been something.

"Leo," Raphael said.

"Yes," Leo replied tersely.

"Why didn't the Foot have _any_ video? Shouldn't there have been some of you and Donnie stealing the camera?"

"No." Leo was still facing away, but Raphael could see the tension all over his body. "Don guessed there would be a camera. We came over the roofs, and he disabled it from fifty feet away. One of his disrupter gizmos."

Raphael shook his head. "He is really something else."

Leo was stuck on the idea of Mike's problems. "Can Don do anything for Mike?"

"No."

Leo let loose then, throwing his fist out with all the strength of his pent-up frustration. He struck downwards, punching the wooden workbench. Metal tools jumped and clattered to the floor.

Raphael winced. _At least it wasn't the wall._

Leo spun and caught the blowtorch with the side of his foot, launching it through the air. It flew across the room and impacted the Shell Cycle with enough force to knock it over.

"What the hell, Leo?" Raphael got up and hopped to his beloved bike. "You think that's gonna help?" He tried to lift the motorcycle, but didn't have quite enough leverage.

Leo stalked over and yanked the bike upright. "I don't see you doing anything!" he shouted.

"You're an idiot," Raphael said. "You have no idea what the problem is, and you sure as hell don't know what a solution would look like. So don't tell _me_ I'm not doing anything."

Leo still looked like he wanted to break things. "Why won't anyone tell me what's going on?"

"Because sometimes we want to fix things ourselves." He hopped back to the Battle Shell and grabbed his crutch. "I'm going downstairs."

* * *

He was sitting on the bed in his room, reading, when there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," he said.

It was Leo. He came in sideways, staying close to the wall. "I'm sorry about earlier," he said. "I didn't mean to say that you and Mike were helpless. I think it came out that way."

"Yeah," Raphael said. "It kinda did."

"I'm sorry," Leo said again. "I just want to know that you guys are going to be okay. And I wanted you to know that I'm here if you need anything."

"I still can't tell you," Raphael said. "It's Mike's secret."

"I know," Leo said. "It was wrong of me to ask you to break that." His eyes wandered around the room, resting briefly on Splinter's gong. "So. I'll see you at practice?"

"I'll be there." As he spoke, he set the alarm on his mental clock.

"Okay. Good night, Raph."

"Night, Farmboy."

Leo left quietly, closing the door behind him. Raphael scooted to the end of the bed and flicked off the light. He lay down and tried to focus his mind, the way Splinter taught them to do for guided meditation.

_I will see the guy with the fishing pole. I will ask him to change his form. I will be in control. I will not be afraid._

He put himself to sleep.


	7. Chapter 6

In his dream, he was back in the alley. He had just emerged from the manhole cover and was starting to walk towards the street when he saw a bright figure lying on the ground, close to the sidewalk.

He recognized the person immediately.

_Mikey!_ he shouted.

A dark shape was crouching over his brother. A Foot ninja, with a very sharp knife, poised to cut.

He was already running. He was running as fast as he could, but the alley was stretching, the buildings looming taller around him, and he wasn't getting any closer. He drew a sai and threw it, but it didn't fly. It hung in the air in front of him, an arm's-length away, moving at the same non-speed as he was.

He put his head down and ran faster, pushing the pavement away with his bare feet. He ran for what felt like forever. Then he looked up and he was there.

The floating sai had vanished, so he drew the other one, preparing to strike. Before he could, the Foot ninja reached up and pulled off his own mask.

It was Don.

He fell to his knees. _Donnie, why?_

_It's good for him_, Don said. _He needs this._

He looked down. Mike had been carved open from neck to waist, his plastron cracked in half like a cookie ready to be shared. His guts came from inside him like a red flower.

He automatically blocked the descending knife with the sai still in his hand. _Donnie, no! What's wrong with you?_

_I'm doing the best I can_, Don said, disentangling his weapon. _It's your turn, Raph._

The knife fell…

* * *

He woke in a dark room, his pulse racing. He saw the young man and he screamed. Everything he had told himself before going to sleep vanished in the face of those images.

"These dreams!" he said, as soon as he was able to form coherent words. "You send me these dreams - you only come when I have a nightmare!"

"This is not truth," the young man said. The bottle was already in his hand. "_You_ send the dreams to _me_. You call for me and I am manifest."

He breathed, calmed himself, let the thoughts come back. _It was only a dream. I am in control._ He sat up, glanced at the floor, saw the fishing pole exactly where he had left his crutch. "I looked that up," he said. "_Manifest_. And _ineffable_."

The young man held out the bottle. "You must drink this."

He wasn't ready. He needed more answers. "If you're part of me, why can't I understand you?"

"I am not you," the man said. "I have never been you."

"Then who _are_ you?" He was done with these games. "Was I really dead? How could I have come back from that?"

"You were body-dead," the young man said. "Your spirit was pushed out, but it did not go far, and you were able to return."

"But when?" It wasn't making sense, didn't fit with his memory of events. "Between when I heard my brothers, and when Don got there?"

"You were –" He broke off. "It is difficult to say in your words."

"Mikey has that too," he said. "Try. I'll listen."

"I will show you," the man said. "I will show you what you do not remember."

In his mind, something opened.

* * *

He was floating above the sidewalk just outside the mouth of the alley. His body was lying on the ground, bloody and abandoned, a few feet away. One of the Foot ninjas was withdrawing his sword from the vulnerable place between plastron and carapace.

"No!" he shouted in a voice that didn't carry beyond his own mouth. _After all I've survived, I'm not going to die here, now, like this._

He tried to move back towards his body, but the air passed through him frictionlessly and he couldn't go.

That's when his brothers arrived.

They came silently, like ghosts, their weapons flashing spinning striking. The Foot ran from them, and they vanished into the shadows.

He was going to try to shout for them, when he saw the glowing figure kneeling over his body.

"Get away from me!" he yelled. The words didn't fly, but the person heard them anyway.

"You are very injured," he said. He moved his hand toward the lifeless body.

"Don't you touch me." He growled voicelessly, completely helpless to protect what had, until recently, been himself.

"You are safe. Help is coming."

"What are you talking about?" he demanded. "I'm dead."

"No," the man said simply.

"Look, I'm dead! What the hell kind of doctor are you?"

"I am the angel," the young man replied.

"I'm not going with you." He crossed his arms, melted partway through himself in an extremely disconcerting way.

"You are very injured," the young man commented again.

He was going to reply, but his senses were suddenly overwhelmed. There was a flash of light, and the smell of dirt and the taste of clean water and the feel of wind in his face, and his brothers' voices calling his name, and he knew, some part of him had always known, that this was the web. He reached for it with translucent fingers.

"My brothers," he said.

"Yes. Help is coming."

"Do you feel them?" Multicolored light played around the shadow that was his outstretched arm. "How did you know before me?"

"I am the angel, Raphael."

Then the person was gone, and the manhole cover flew off, and Michelangelo launched himself into the surface world. "Please no," he was saying as he pelted the few yards to his brother's body and threw himself to his knees. "Please no..." He stuffed his fist in his mouth to stifle a scream.

He was carrying the web inside him, and part of it was missing.

Don was coming, and Leo. "He's dead!" Mikey howled in a strangled voice.

He needed to go back to them. He closed his incorporeal fist on the shimmering energy, and it reeled him back to himself.

* * *

He rose slowly into familiar flesh.

"What was that?" he asked, when he was sure he was in control of his own body.

"That is what truly happened," the man told him. "The other is what you constructed, to hide from the truth."

"I was _dead_ the first time I talked to you?" He put a steadying hand against the very solid wall of his room.

"Yes. You wanted so powerfully to return, that I was called to you."

"So…" His head was spinning. "I have psychic powers, but they're not healing powers. They're – they're _summoning_ powers. The healing comes from you."

"This is truth," the young man said.

"And you told me right from the beginning." _There__'__s no big plot. I__'__m not insane._ "If I had just believed you…"

"You were afraid. You did not understand what I was."

He looked down. "I thought you were there to take me away." His eyes traced the contour of the blanket. "And I think you sort of did. How can I get back in the web?"

"You must finish healing. Only then will your spirit be able to move outward."

It was exactly what Master Splinter had told him. He held out his hand, and the man put the bottle into it.

"So what _is_ in here?" he asked, popping off the cork.

"You already know," the man said. "You have felt it."

Cold. Falling. Pain seeping away and air in his lungs. The little reincarnation, putting his body back together.

He drank.

This time, the world didn't immediately disappear.

"Did you call my brothers?" he asked, while he waited for the darkness. "The real ones. Not the ghosts. Did you bring them to me?"

"Yes."

"Thank you."

The young man leaned over him, his brightness falling onto Raphael's chest. It was warm. He laid a gentle kiss on Raphael's forehead. "Be well," he said.

He felt himself vibrating from the inside out. He thought he saw the young man smile, but it was hard to tell. The world was shaking, harder and harder until it shook itself apart.

Everything dissolved.

* * *

He woke in a dark room. His fist was clenched around nothingness.

He breathed deeply, extending his consciousness into every part of himself. He flexed his fingers and wiggled his toes.

Nothing hurt.

He sat up, threw the blanket aside, and looked hard at his tightly bound ankle. Slowly, slowly, he moved the joint.

It replied with a satisfying crack.

No pain.

He reached forward and pulled the bandage off, tearing it away in great loops, not bothering to roll it up as he went. When his ankle was laid bare he rolled his foot around, stretching it in every direction.

It felt great.

He paused for a split second, in case the Wrath of Don was about to burst in on him, before leaping out of bed. He landed equally on both feet, and they supported him equally. He jumped up and down.

His whole body felt like one well-oiled spring.

It was six-thirty Monday morning.

It was time to go to practice.

He put on his mask first, then his wrist-guards, his padding. His belt, tying it snugly around his midsection and tucking his equipment into the elastic straps that lined the inside.

Finally, his sai. He hefted them, flipped them in and out along his forearms, and slid them firmly into their familiar places at his hips.

He was back to himself.

He realized he didn't have any clothes to wear. Where his brothers merely found human clothes to be largely pointless, he actively disliked them. Hence, he owned no more than seemed strictly necessary. Which meant that at this moment, he owned absolutely none that weren't full of holes.

Fine. So he would borrow some.

It was time to be with his brothers again.

He went downstairs.

* * *

When he entered the dojo, Leonardo was already there, wearing his street clothes and stretching on the floor.

"Hey," Leo said. He switched sides. "Looks like you fixed your ankle."

"Sort of." He began hopping from foot to foot, building up his heart rate.

"Looks pretty fixed to me."

"It is." He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, throwing a few punches into the air. "I'll tell you all about it later."

"Sure, we can -"

"Raphael!"

The Wrath of Don had descended.

"_What_ do you think you're doing?"

Raphael boxed playfully in his brother's direction. "The same thing we do every morning."

"Oh, honestly." Don crossed the room, threw down his bo, and followed it to the floor. "Sit."

He didn't want to sit. He stuck out his foot, wiggling his toes in Donatello's face.

"Laugh it up, Magic Boy," Don said, shifting so he could prop Raphael's heel on his sweatpants-covered knee. "If this ankle is not perfect, I'm going to knock you unconscious and tie you to a bed for four months." He wrapped his hands around the joint, squeezing the muscle and feeling over the knobs of bone. "I absolutely do not believe this," he grumbled, and redoubled his exploratory efforts, working his fingers up and down, pressing deeply.

Leo had come to join them, hovering over Donatello's shoulder. "What do you think?" he asked.

Don ignored him and looked up at Raphael. "Does this hurt at all?" he demanded.

"I'm going to have to disappoint you," Raphael replied, "and say no."

Donatello flattened his leg, forcing Raphael to scramble for balance, and said to the universe at large, "How am I supposed to practice medicine under these conditions?"

It was at that moment that Michelangelo entered the dojo, took one look at them, shouted "It's outward!" and ran out of the room without any further explanation.

"What in the world?" Leo said, but Raphael was completely focused on the empty doorway.

"Well, at least it's different," Don offered.

"Are you certain?" Splinter was saying, just outside.

"Oh, Sensei, it's like a volcano." Michelangelo dragged their father into the room. "Please can I do it now?"

"Of course," Splinter said, fixing his other sons with an unfocused gaze. "Practice will wait."

Michelangelo launched himself at the empty place to Donatello's left, rolling his sleeves up, waving Leo down to the floor opposite. He didn't stop moving until he was a fraction of an inch from touching Raphael's hand. "Can I do this?" he asked.

"Mikey," Raphael said, "you can do this until the cows come home."

Mike needed no further invitation. He seized Raphael's hands, squeezed them hard, and expelled every last bit of oxygen from his body.

"What -" Don started, but Leo shushed him.

Raphael closed his eyes and cleared his mind. He felt like he was being inflated, his skin stretching until it was completely filled. He felt like he was sweating backwards. He felt like his organs had been fit together by a master stonemason, so tightly that nothing else was needed to hold them in place.

Then a valve opened, and the fullness began to drain away like a slow exhalation, until he was the right size again.

He opened his eyes.

"Guys," Mikey said, and stuck out his elbow. Don and Leo put their hands on his arm, and Mike started a low humming, which his brothers joined, matching the note.

Raphael could feel it vibrating somewhere around his solar plexus, making his senses blurry, acting like static to block out whatever happened next.

They held the note for one minute, two minutes - advantages of lungs built for diving - and then it faded away. There was a moment of stillness, and then Mike toppled over onto his back.

"Dudes," he said to the ceiling. "That feels _so_ much better."

Leo looked at his hands. "Something feels better."

"I have no idea what we just did," Don said.

Raphael leaned over. "You okay, Mikey?"

"I'm somewhere on the 'awesome' side of 'okay'."

"So what was that?" Leo asked. "Semi-annual chi realignment? Every six months or ten thousand miles?"

Mike reached out limply, his fingers brushing over Raphael's arm. "You explain."

Raphael looked at his youngest brother, unsure how lucid he was. "Can I tell them?"

"Tell them everything."

He glanced at Master Splinter, kneeling at a respectful remove, but their father was keeping silent, recognizing that something was happening of which he could not be part. "Okay." He stared at his hands, thinking about where to start. "This is what Mike knows," he said, pitching his voice so that Splinter could hear, "and this is what I know that I didn't know yesterday.

"Last night I saw the guy again. I remembered what you said," he glanced at Leo, "but then it turned out that he wasn't part of me after all."

"Then what is he?" Leo asked in confusion.

"He's some other kind of thing. Something I can call when I need help." He leaned back on his hands. "Which he kind of told me right at the beginning, only I wasn't listening. I didn't understand until he showed me."

"I'm lost," Don said. "What 'other kind of thing' is he?"

"I don't know," Raphael said. "He isn't real _or_ in my head. He's something else."

"Perhaps he is a spirit from the astral plane," Splinter volunteered.

"Wouldn't that mean that he's a projection of a real person?" Leo asked.

"No," Splinter said. "The astral plane is much more than a void waiting to be visited by spirits from other realities. There are things that live there, things that even I do not comprehend."

Don looked back to Raphael. "So what did he show you?"

"He showed me what really happened in the alley. When I was..."

It was hard to continue, and Don suggested, "Unconscious?"

"No." He still didn't know how to admit to his family what Michelangelo had been hiding from them all week. "I was -" And then it hit him. "You knew, didn't you?" He looked hard at Mike. "You knew before you even saw me."

Mike turned away from Raphael, curling up on his side, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Yeah," he said in a small voice. "But I was praying so hard that I was wrong."

"What are you talking about?" Leo's frustration from the previous evening was filtering back. "What did you know?"

Raphael put his hand on Mike's bare arm. "That I was dead."

"No," Don said immediately.

"Yes," Raphael replied, just as fast. "I was really, really dead. And I didn't like it." He started rubbing Mike's arm, slowly, up and down. "That's when the guy came, the first time. He made the Foot soldiers go away, and he made you guys come. And I was trying to go back. Then Mike came, and I saw the way. I saw the web."

Mike rolled over, looking up at him. "You did? What did it smell like?"

"It smelled like dirt." He paused, listening to his own words. "How did I know that? I've never smelled dirt before."

"Because it wasn't smell," Mike said. He closed his eyes. "And it wasn't dirt."

"What was it?" Leo asked.

"It was you." Mike cracked open one eye, looking at his oldest brother. "It was your energy."

"My energy smells like _dirt_?" Leo was completely affronted.

"It's okay," Mike said. "It's good dirt." He poked Raphael's arm. "Go on."

"So I followed the web and I went back," Raphael concluded. "_Then_ I was unconscious."

"That still doesn't make sense," Don said. "You were alive when I got there. You weren't exactly the picture of health, but you didn't have any mortal wounds."

"I did." His brothers were all wearing clothes, but he had only his usual minimal gear. His hand went to his side, where he had seen the sword slide out, and he twisted, trying to look. "I don't remember feeling it. But I saw it. Last night. Right here." He turned to show Don.

Don looked doubtfully, running his fingers over the skin. "No, Raph," he said. "There was never anything there."

"Don't tell me that," Raphael said.

Splinter cleared his throat, and they all looked over at him. "The mortal wound is the place where the spirit leaves the body," he said. "If the spirit re-enters, it must go the same way, and seal the portal behind it."

"So Raphael had to heal that wound in order to come back to life," Leo said. He looked at Raphael expectantly.

"I don't remember," Raphael said. "I don't remember coming back." He looked around at his family. "But I'm glad I did." He twiddled his fingers against the floor, waiting for someone to say something. No one did. "So. Um. Are you guys okay with this?"

"I'm withholding judgment," Don said, "until you tell me what happened just now."

"Oh. Right." He leaned forward. "See, I came back by following the web, but I didn't come back _into_ the web." Leo looked shocked, but Raphael didn't wait for an interruption. "Which I didn't know until Mike told me. And I talked to Master Splinter and I talked to the guy and I figured out that my energy was busy with this other thing, and I couldn't come back to you guys until I was done with it. Which is why I had to keep seeing that guy, even when I didn't want to."

"And so -" Leo jumped in.

"And so what happened just now," Raphael said loudly, silencing his older brother, "is that Mike brought me back."

"That," Leo said slowly, "explains... pretty much everything."

"Except for why Mike didn't just tell us," Don said, "so that we could deal with it like rational individuals."

"Because it wouldn't have helped," Mike said. "You couldn't fix it. You couldn't go where he was."

"It would have been nice to know," Don said.

"It would have made it worse," Mike said.

"Why?"

Mike twined his fingers in front of his face. "Because it was all... and when you know, but you can't, it gets, the thing, you feel it maybe, and it makes it go but then you feel and it goes again, sort of..." He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I can't, Donnie. I can't make it a why that you can see. I want you guys to know but your brains aren't like that and it will hurt you."

"Donatello," Splinter said. "What Michelangelo is trying to say, is that energies do not answer to the logic you know. They have a reasoning that must be understood on their own terms. For him to describe this to you, would be as useless as for you to describe yellow to a blind person."

Mike nodded gratefully, and they were quietly thoughtful for another moment.

"So," Raphael said. "Are we okay?"

"How can we be okay?" Don asked. "You died, only then you came back to life and recovered in a week when it should have taken months. You have some new ability that none of us can really know anything about, and... I don't know how to live with that. Should I ignore you next time you get hurt, because you'll just do your magic and be fine the next morning?" He looked around at them all. "How can we be okay in a world where the Foot actually killed one of us?"

They were all silent.

"If I may?" Splinter stood up and padded over to their circle. Leonardo and Donatello moved aside so he could sit. "We have always known that the Foot are capable of killing those we love," he began. "You have studied your entire lives in order to delay that moment as long as possible. It is disturbing that it should have happened so soon."

"I'm sorry." Raphael hung his head. "I failed."

"You did not," Splinter said. "When it mattered most, you transcended the bounds of your physical training and fought for life. I am very proud of you."

"But did he learn something?" Don asked. "Is this a repeatable event? Or have we only learned how vulnerable we are?"

"A weakness recognized becomes a strength," Splinter said. "We know now that we can be caught unawares, and that there are no limits to the dishonor of our enemy."

"I think we already knew that," Leo said bitterly.

"We have also learned," Splinter said, "that the web which connects you is so strong, that even death cannot completely break it. Michelangelo," he waited for his youngest son to look at him. "You are the steward of the web. It is more important than ever that you guard it well."

"I can't," Mike said. He sat up, wrapping his fingers around the toes of his sneakers, pulling himself into a circle. "I failed too, Master. I should have held onto him, but I didn't."

"You are still learning," Splinter said, reaching across the circle to touch Michelangelo's hand. "I know this is a great responsibility. Your love for your brothers helped Raphael find his way back, and it will help you to rise to your duties."

"So you think it could happen again?" Don asked, the question still not resolved in his mind. "None of us can really die, as long as the others are alive and want us back?" Emotions warred on his face as he tried to decide whether this was a good thing, or a false hope.

"Donatello," Splinter said. "Faith in the spiritual powers has always been difficult for you. I have told you many times that you must trust in them, even though you do not understand them, as your brothers trust in your ability to solve the puzzles of the mind."

"Yes, Master," Don said. "But this is literally life and death. Blind trust isn't good enough. I need to know."

"These are answers I cannot give you," Splinter said. "You must continue to practice meditation. The answers are waiting for you there."

"But in the meantime," Leo said, "Don and I are still completely chi-blind. What if something happens to Mike?"

"Then you guys would bring me back," Mike said.

"But -" Leo started.

"I don't have _more_ of the web than you do; it's just that I can _see_ it." Mike rubbed the soles of his shoes together, listening to the rubber slide. "All you have to do is be there."

"I want to," Leo said. "I want to be here for all of you. For a long time."

"There is nothing I desire more than to see all my sons safe and happy for many years," Splinter said. "How can we reach this goal?"

"By walking the path of the warrior," Leo said immediately.

"Which is?"

"The path of the student," Don replied.

"Who..."

"Is always studying and never sated," Mike answered.

"Excellent," Splinter said. "How shall we proceed along this path?"

"Through disciplining our minds and bodies with constant training, yada yada, and not letting a bunch of creeps get the drop on us." Raphael stood up. "Come on. Somebody give me some clothes, and let's do this thing."

* * *

It was their custom, after practice, to gather in the kitchen and down large quantities of water. Today's training had been challenging, but Splinter had worked to keep it positive, and it had gone a long way towards making them all feel better about everything that had happened in the past week.

"So," Leo said, when he had finished his third glass. "If you're going to have a long and productive relationship with this guy, you should probably ask him what his name is."

"Actually," Raphael said, draping himself comfortably over his chair, "I don't think I'll see him again."

"Oh?" Leo refilled his glass and leaned against the counter.

"Yeah." Raphael set his glass on the table and wrestled Donatello's sweatshirt off over his head. "Last night, before he left, he said _be well_. But I think he meant _goodbye_."

"Bummer," Mike said, from his perch beside the microwave. "Just when you'd gotten things all figured out."

"I don't know." He spun his glass, watching the light reflect off the water. "Apparently I'm a summoner. For this, I needed the guy with the fishing pole. Maybe next time I'll get someone else. Which reminds me." He balled up the shirt and threw it at Donatello, who was still staking out a prime bit of territory near the sink. "You owe me a serious retraction."

"Technically, you weren't -"

"Take-backer."

"Oh, fine." Don put his glass down and bowed low. "I apologize, Master Raphael. You have much more spiritual resonance than the average barbed wire fence. Your chi reverberates like a bell and shines like a thousand stars."

"And?"

"And I am a loser who can never hope to be your equal in the matters most mystical."

"Thank you."

Don straightened up. "That was completely humiliating. But on the plus side, Leo smells like dirt, and I'm never going to let him forget it."

"I do not!" Leo complained. "I cleanse my spirit at least twice a week! Tell him, Mikey."

"Sorry, bro."

"Well, fine," Leo said to Don, "but you smell like, uh..."

"Thunderstorms," Mike supplied.

"Yeah, you -" Leo's ears caught up with his mouth. "Oh, come on, Mike. That's not a good insult."

Mike shrugged. "I'm just telling it like it is, bro. If Don's chi has a smell, it's thunderstorms."

"So there," Don said.

Splinter came in then, having concluded his own post-training exercises. He had obviously been listening to their conversation as he approached.

"This sounds like a most interesting discussion," he said, lowering himself into his usual seat. "You all seem much restored to yourselves."

"I've decided to look at this as a Plan B," Don said. "Plan A is obviously to avoid dying. But just in case, we have this safety net. It might be a net with really big holes in it, but a small chance is still better than no chance."

"We're going to need those small advantages," Leo said. "The Foot are distracted now with trying to grab all the alien tech, but sooner or later we're going to be facing them again."

"We'll be ready," Mike said, sliding down from the counter and bouncing into a fighting pose. "Every time they think we're dead, we just come back and kick their butts harder. This time, we'll be so awesome, they'll just give up and go home."

"That would be nice," Leo said. "Though it would be fine by me if we didn't see them for a long time."

"We should do something in the meanwhile," Raphael said. "While we can." He looked at his family. Mike, who carried the burden of their lives and almost always made it seem weightless. Don, never content with the unknown, always striving for something better. Splinter, simply enjoying the presence of his sons. Leo, whose practical mind had just turned to the matter of breakfast. "You know what? Let's go to Massachusetts."

They did. It was full of crazies.

**End**

* * *

Notes on the Timeline

Revelation takes place in NT Season 3 between "Hunted" and "H.A.T.E." Here's a list of in-story references to NT events, in the order that those events occurred in the cartoon.

_What about that time Hun got me? Remember, when the invisible ninjas tried to follow me home?_ – "The Way of Invisibility"

_I got Casey's house._ – "Tales of Leo", with additional implied reference to "The Shredder Strikes Back", in which Leo gets beaten up by the Foot clan.

_I was scared of heights until I thought Master Splinter was in danger._ – Splinter relates this story in "Tales of Leo".

_When you were blind._ / _…way back when Splinter was missing._ / _…that kid. Tyler._ – "Lone Raph and Cub"

_Zog - brave, honorable Zog – whose sacrifice had been in vain._ – "Rogue in the House"

_…a stiff discussion of local news, mostly centering around the on-going clean-up from the alien invasion._ / _Professor Honeycutt, who had fried his circuits to end the senseless war._ / _Don didn't believe in telepathy until the Triceratons tried to tear his mind apart._ – "Space Invaders" and "Worlds Collide". (Several episodes after this story takes place, in "Mission of Gravity", Honeycutt downloads his remaining consciousness to Don's PDA.)

_Mrs. Morrison_ – "Touch and Go"

_Maybe I__'__ll step on a land-mine._ / _Leatherhead, only just saved from the hunter._- "Hunted"

Revelation takes place here.

_"__Let__'__s go to Massachusetts.__"__ They did. It was full of crazies._ – "H.A.T.E."

_He was playing chess … and playing it badly._ – Three episodes later ("The Lesson"), the guys tell April about the human kid they taught to fight. They also taught him to play chess, before they started to just use the pieces as projectiles.

_But Stockman had these really interesting notes on some new robotics..._ – These will become the Karai-bots in "New Blood".

_This time, we'll be so awesome, they'll just give up and go home._ – Which is exactly what Shredder tries to do in "Exodus".

And that's the end for real. Thanks for reading!


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